Walter Tandy Murch

Background

Walter Tandy Murch was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on August 17, 1907.

Education

He studied art at the Ontario College of Art from 1925 to 1927 before settling in New York City.

Career

In New York City he was influenced by the abstract expressionist Arshile Gorky and the strangely suggestive box art of Joseph Cornell. His interest in machinery and technology brought him commissions to do covers for Fortune and Scientific American magazines and led to his being collected by American corporations and commissioned by department stores for their display windows before being recognized by the art world. His death in New York City on December 11, 1967, turned his retrospective exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1967 into a memorial.

He worked in the muted, contemplative style of the French 18th-century master Chardin. Just as Chardin had done by focusing on ordinary kitchen objects, Murch made a startling break with tradition in the subjects for his still lifes. Typical works are Clock Study, Transformer, Thermostat, Car Lock I, Cylinder and Pigeon, Carburetor, Radio, and The Calculator. Though these supposedly purely functional objects are clearly recognizable, Murch smeared on his paint in the abstract expressionist style, thus asserting the importance of the artist and his medium. The final "magic realist" effect is the mysterious beauty of commonplace objects, transcending both their precise form and their everyday use

Achievements

• Murch produced a number of still life studies of machines and machine parts that are unique in American painting.

Connections

Father:

Wlater Murch

Mother:

Clara Louise Tandy

child:

Walter Murch

child:

Louise Tandy Schablein