Oscar Murillo valuation
Colombian-born painter of stitched, stained, worked-over canvases that carry the labour of their making on the surface.
Oscar Murillo was born in La Paila, in Colombia's Valle del Cauca, in 1986, and moved to London with his family at the age of ten.
What a work by Oscar Murillo is worth
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Bio
Oscar Murillo was born in La Paila, in Colombia's Valle del Cauca, in 1986, and moved to London with his family at the age of ten. He studied at the University of Westminster, graduating in 2007, and took an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2012. His paintings are made on the studio floor and over time: canvases cut and stitched together, folded, walked on, rubbed with dirt and oil stick and painted again, with words and the names of foods running across them in the early work, so that the circulation of labour, materials and people is carried in the surface. Frequencies, begun in 2013, places blank canvases on the desks of schoolchildren around the world to be marked over months. His other series include the dark, layered surge paintings. He took part in the Venice Biennale of 2015, and in 2019 he and the three other nominees for the Turner Prize asked to share it, and did.
The paintings are unique and vary from stitched assemblages of many canvas pieces to large single canvases of oil, oil stick, graphite and dirt; the grime and loose layers are part of the work rather than damage, and should be described as such. Works on paper and Frequencies canvases come up too. Provenance through David Zwirner, his principal gallery, or Carlos/Ishikawa in London, and an accurate date are what a buyer checks, since the series differ a great deal.
La Paila, the Royal College and Frequencies
Frequencies has gathered canvases from schools in many countries, and some were shown at the Venice Biennale in 2015. He shared the 2019 Turner Prize with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Tai Shani.
His work is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Broad in Los Angeles, the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
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