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Artists›James McGarrell

James McGarrell

James McGarrell

American, 1930

WA-00028426

PrintmakingFiguration

Representation

None documented

9

Institutional Exhibitions

86

Works in Collection

133

Assets Indexed

2

Authority-backed Facts

0

Publications Referenced

80%

Profile Completeness

Cultural Positioning

Influence Graph

No influence edges encoded yet.

Authority Records (3)

WikidataQ1668538 ULAN500010350

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

View all exhibitions →

No image

American Prints: 1913�1963

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1974–1975

No image

American Prints from the International Program

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1971

No image

Tamarind: Homage to Lithography

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1969

No image

Americans Today: 25 Painters as Printmakers

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1966

No image

44 Drawings: Recent Acquisitions

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1965–1966

No image

Contemporary Painters and Sculptors as Printmakers

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1964

No image

Recent Painting U.S.A.: The Figure

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1962

No image

Recent Acquisitions

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1961–1962

No image

New Images of Man

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1959

Field Verification (2 fields)

2 cross-verified · 0 single-source

Birth yearDuplicate Merge· 85%✓
NationalityDuplicate Merge· 85%✓

Source Registry (1)

MoMA bulk 2026-05-04https://www.moma.org/artists/3884
Tier 1 · Institutional92%

About

Why this artist matters now

James McGarrell was an American painter whose figurative work merged abstraction with narrative content, creating densely layered compositions that interrogated the relationship between figuration and gesture. Active from the 1950s onward, he developed a distinctive approach that positioned figuration as a counterpoint to postwar abstraction's dominance. His paintings combined distorted human forms, architectural elements, and landscape with a gestural, often darkly inflected handling of paint. McGarrell's work maintained a steady engagement with the figure across decades when abstraction held institutional priority.

Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 29d ago

Graph relationships

Taste overlap and adjacency

Movement

Figuration

Medium

Printmaking

Related Artists

11 in graph

Institutional

Museum Collections

Art Institute of Chicago Museum of Modern ArtNew York

Canonical record

Artworks (86)

Studio Interior

Studio Interior

1965 · Graphite on ivory wove paper

48.5 × 76.4 cm (19 1/8 × 30 1/8 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Marine Scene

1965 · Graphite on ivory wove paper

48.6 × 76.4 cm (19 3/16 × 30 1/8 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Interior with Desk

Interior with Desk

1965 · Graphite on ivory wove paper

48.8 × 76.2 cm (19 1/4 × 30 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Plate XI from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 3/4 × 19 13/16" (65.4 × 50.3 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate IX from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 7/8 × 19 13/16" (65.8 × 50.3 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate XIV from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 13/16 × 19 13/16" (65.6 × 50.3 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate XII from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 15/16 × 19 3/4" (65.9 × 50.1 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate V from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 15/16 × 19 5/8" (65.9 × 49.8 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate VIII from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 15/16 × 19 3/4" (65.9 × 50.1 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate II from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 3/4 × 19 5/8" (65.4 × 49.8 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate XV from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 13/16 × 19 13/16" (65.6 × 50.3 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate IV from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 13/16 × 19 15/16" (65.6 × 50.6 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate III from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 26 × 19 7/8" (66 × 50.5 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate VI from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 7/8 × 19 11/16" (65.7 × 50 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate VII from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 26 × 20" (66 × 50.8 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Two Part Inventions

1965 · Portfolio of fifteen lithographs

various composition dimensions; sheet (each approx.): 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate XIII from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 15/16 × 19 7/8" (65.9 × 50.5 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate X from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 15/16 × 19 15/16" (65.9 × 50.6 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Plate I from the portfolio Two Part Inventions

1965 · One from a portfolio of fifteen lithographs

composition (irreg.): 25 3/4 × 19 3/4" (65.4 × 50.2 cm); sheet: 26 7/8 × 20 7/8" (68.2 × 53 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

1964 · Pencil on paper

23 1/4 x 17 3/4" (59.3 x 45.3 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Cup

1963 · Lithograph in black on white wove paper

Image/sheet: 57.5 × 37.4 cm (22 11/16 × 14 3/4 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Girl in Fur

1963 · Lithograph in red-brown on ivory wove paper

Image: 48 × 48 cm (18 15/16 × 18 15/16 in.); Sheet: 56.5 × 67.2 cm (22 1/4 × 26 1/2 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Four Models

1963 · Lithograph in red-brown on cream Japanese paper

76.3 × 56 cm (30 1/16 × 22 1/16 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

Cup

1963 · Lithograph on ivory wove paper

Image: 54.1 × 29.3 cm (21 5/16 × 11 9/16 in.); Sheet: 57.8 × 36.8 cm (22 13/16 × 14 1/2 in.)

Art Institute of Chicago

View all 86 artworks →

Artwork sources (3)

86 published of 131 catalogued · 90 with image

MoMA
45 publishedof 90 catalogued50 img
Art Institute Chicago
40 published40 img
Cleveland Museum of Art
1 published

Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 1)

1 entries · 1 sources

Two-part Inventions
— · Cleveland · 1 prov
Url Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number

Record

Images

Untitled (Art Institute of Chicago)

Art Institute of Chicago

Untitled (Art Institute of Chicago)

Art Institute of Chicago

Relationships

3

Movements1

Collections2

Art Institute of Chicago Museum of Modern Art

Institutional

Representation & Collections

In collection

Art Institute of Chicago

In collection

Museum of Modern Art

New York, US