John Marin
John Marin’s prints, watercolors, and paintings earned him a critical reputation as the most important American artist of his generation. Through his close association with the influential art dealer and critic Alfred Stieglitz, Marin played a key role in introducing the theories and techniques of European modernism to American art. Employing a visual vocabulary of personal signs, symbols, and metaphors, his cityscapes, landscapes, and seascapes moved between naturalism and abstraction.
How does the changing city skyline make you feel?
For Marin, New York’s geometric architecture and kinetic street life epitomized the abstract principles of modern European art movements. The vantage point in this picture, looking from Brooklyn across the East River toward lower Manhattan, was popular with artists who could juxtapose the 19th-century Brooklyn Bridge with the city’s 20th-century skyscrapers. Marin’s scene boldly declares the spiritual dimensions of the entire urban landscape on both sides of the bridge.
Museum purchase, Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Income Fund and American Art Trust Fund
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