Brendan Murphy

Brendan Murphy is one of the most visionary and impactful artists of this century, and one of the top-selling and financially successful contemporary artists in the world. His monumental sculptures and emotionally charged paintings reach for the forces that quietly govern a life, love, fear, ambition, doubt, and belief, translating them into a visual language of handwritten formulas, equations, and single words that say what feeling usually leaves unspoken.

Murphy came to art late and without a map. He played professional basketball in Europe and traded on Wall Street before September 11, 2001, changed the course of his life. Living in New York at the time, he lost friends in the attacks and walked away from finance to paint, teaching himself with guidance from Eric Fischl, David Salle, and Ross Bleckner. The early years were lean. He worked from a 400-square-foot studio in SoHo, slept in his car for stretches, and kept going. In 2014 he sold Solfire, the tennis apparel company he had founded almost by accident, and for the first time supported his family through his art alone.

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Today Murphy works with more than twenty galleries internationally and his public sculptures can be seen all over the world. His monumental installations, from the BOONJI Spaceman to the LOVE MATTERS…Everywhere bear, stand in cities from Cleveland to Perth, his large-scale paintings anchor major collections worldwide, and his seven-foot tribute to Rafael Nadal anchors the champion's flagship academy in Mallorca.

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In 2021 he created the Boonji Project, the largest primary NFT sale in history. In 2026 he launched Love Matters... Everywhere, a global public art initiative whose chrome, formula-covered bears carry a single message into city squares, beginning with the twelve-foot Loretta beneath The Vessel at Hudson Yards in New York.

His paintings and sculptures are held in private collections worldwide, among them those of Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, LeBron James, Ambassador Nicole McGraw, Peter Brant, Bracken Darnell, Ryan Gosling, Warren Buffett, and more.

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In 2026, Brendan Murphy was selected by the U.S. Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies as the featured American artist for the nation's 250th anniversary. He is a central presence in Passport to Patriotism: 250 Years of Diplomacy, a museum exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., open to the public from August 1 through October 18, 2026. For it he debuts two major works: Freedom 250, a monumental two-piece oil painting on canvas measuring 72 by 96 inches, created to reflect on 250 years of American history, creativity, and culture; and a 23-foot BOONJI Spaceman installation sited in the heart of the nation's capital.