Denzil Hurley

On the late post-conceptual paintings of the influential artist and educator

The Barbados-born, Seattle-based painter Denzil Hurley (1949-2021) was a quietly influential figure in the art world throughout his life, dedicating much of his time to teaching at the University of Washington and to championing other artists. Hurley's interests in modular forms and structures involving squares and rectangles led him to consider the interconnectivity and conjunctions of paintings and signs, material and meaning, presence and absence, and the languages of painting and speech. Published in tandem with an exhibition of his work at Canada, this book is the first major publication on Hurley. The catalog focuses on Hurley's final paintings, a mixture of reductive post-conceptual painting and provisional construction methods of the African diaspora, including his spare "stick" and "glyphs" series.