Paintings on marble

This volume provides a rare glimpse into the most intimate works of the internationally acclaimed artist Brice Marden. Twenty years ago, Marden produced a series of small and virtually unknown paintings on the Greek island of Hydra, which the artist first visited in 1971. Inspired by the island's ancient marble quarries, Marden created these private paintings in oil on marble fragments as tokens for friends and family. Between 1981 and 1987, the artist made a total of 32 paintings on marble, gathered together here for the first time in a single volume. The period coincided with changes in his publicly exhibited paintings. In 1987, the date of his last painting on marble, Marden presented the first public exhibition of his calligraphic paintings, as opposed to his earlier monochrome work. An essay by Lisa Liebmann here helps to contextualize that shift: according to the artist, the diagonal in the marble fragments helped serve as a stepping stone from rectilinear to more organic form.