James Surls


James Surls is an American modernist artist. His father was a carpenter, and his mother was an elder of the Cherokee Nation. Surls earned a BS from Sam Houston State University and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 1998, he moved from Splendora, Texas to Carbondale, Colorado.
He is best known for large sculptures that are roughly hewn and derive much of their power from a close connection to nature and raw materials. His drawings and prints are largely monotone. Surls' work is particularly organic and primal. Having built a career in the 1980s and 1990s as a Texas artist, Surls relocated to a Colorado ranch and removed his work from for-profit galleries. His work is now represented exclusively by his own studio.
In 2009, five Surls bronze-and-steel bouquets were set up on Park Avenue by the New York City Parks Public Art Program and the fund for Park Avenue.

Public collections

The Dallas Museum of Art, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, the Meadows Museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Smithsonian American Art Museum are among the public collections holding work by James Surls.
Other public collections are:
Albright Knox Gallery ; American Telephone & Telegraph ; Arkansas Art Center ; Art Museum of Southeast Texas ; Bennington Museum ; Contemporary Arts Museum ; Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo ; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts ; El Paso Museum of Art ; Fort Worth Art, Museum ; High Museum ; Honolulu Museum of Art; Katonah Museum ; Liquid Paper Corporation ; Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art ; Memphis Museum of Art ; Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority ; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth ; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts ; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas ; Museum of Fine Arts ; Museum of Modern Art ; McNay Art Museum ; Nelson-Atkins Museum ; Pittsburgh Center for the Arts ; Portland Art Museum ; San Antonio Art Museum ; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ; Seattle Art Museum ; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ; Stedelijk Museum ; Tyler Museum of Art ; University of Nebraska Art Galleries ; Waco Art Center ; Whitney Museum of American Art ; Witte memorial museum.

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