John Marin: The Edge of Abstraction

John Marin    

John Marin            –  , 

Meredith Ward Fine Art 60 east 66 th street suite 2b new york ny 10021 tel 212 744 7306 fax 212 744 7308

New York Fantasy, c.  Watercolor on paper,  ¼ x  ½ inches 4

Preface John Marin: The Edge of Abstraction is the gallery’s first exhibition of Marin’s work since beginning our representation of the artist’s estate in 2004. It is the result of many conversations over the years about just what it is that makes Marin’s work so important, so innovative, so engaging, and so endlessly appealing. Ultimately, it is Marin’s delicate balance of abstraction with an unwavering truth to his subjects that lends his work both its immediacy and its timelessness. With this apparent contradiction—the use of abstraction to convey the “realism” of his subject—Marin’s paintings become more than just visual encounters. They convey the full force of his experience and imagination—what he called his “inner seeings.”

Scholars have noted Marin’s influence on the Abstract Expressionists in the generation that followed him, and indeed, Marin’s work blazed a trail of possibilities for these younger artists. Marin had begun to explore the abstraction of forms as early as the 1910s, in works like New York Fantasy, c. 1912 (p. 2), in which a view of the New York skyline is reduced to a series of saturated bands of color that predate the classic paintings of Mark Rothko by about thirty-five years. However, Marin never abandoned his insistence on the primacy of nature.

Whether painting the city or the sea, Marin exploited the fluidity of his medium, while honoring his subject in a way that would be anathema to artists of the New York School.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the steadfast support and encouragement of Norma B. Marin, the artist’s daughterin-law. Her knowledge of Marin’s work, honed over a lifetime, has been an invaluable resource in the planning of the exhibition. Deepest thanks go to John Sacret Young for his poetic, passionate, and exceptionally perceptive essay. As a collector of American modernism, John Young has been an avid student of Marin’s work since spotting his first Marin watercolor at Bernard Danenberg Gallery some thirty years ago. Mr. Young also selected the quotes that accompany the works. My appreciation goes, too, to Kirk Montague, who prepared the checklist and assisted with all aspects of the exhibition.

Meredith E. Ward

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“The work of many landscape painters looks as if it had been laboriously traced on a pane of glass set between the artist and the scene. Marin broke the glass and let day light and fresh air flood in. The straight lines that swing through his paintings like guide wires keep the eye shifting from the flat surface of the picture to tilting transparent planes inside it. The curving calligraphic lines follow the rhythm rather than the contours of what was actually before him, re-creating the contradictory pulls and thrusts of city, sea, tide, wind, boats, tree, and mountains.”

Alexander Eliot, Three Hundred Years of American Painting (1957), p. 190.

Related to St. Paul’s, New York,  Oil on canvas, ½ x  inches 6

John Marin: The Edge of Abstraction

by John Sacret Young “… the first strokes of the brush. How lovely the stuff is when you’ve just put it down. While it’s still all alive. … Paint. Lovely paint.

Why, I could rub my nose in it or lick it up for breakfast.… The spiritual substance. The pure innocent song of some damn fool angel that doesn’t know even the name of God.” –The painter Gully Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary

There are these stories—or perhaps tales—of how Marin painted. This “waggish, unassuming, boylike and curiously dignified”i man, whose “face was all puckered up with smiles and frowns,”ii spotted sitting in a tree, or hunkered in the stern of a dory, or standing knee deep in Casco Bay painting with both hands, and using an easel that swiveled round three hundred sixty degrees like a great plate or a lazy Susan.

Whatever the exact truth, one thing is abundantly clear about John Marin: he loved to paint—and he did it originally, and with equal the fervor and industry of Van Gogh, Turner, or Pollock. His love of what he did is in and jumps off the work, whether early or late, watercolor or oil, as a kind of joy and undeniable force as sharp as the scent of paint itself, and bestrides his imagination and invention from the teens to his last days working in bed in 1953. He returned to the same themes and the same places, but they were not few and never with a loss of vigor, investigation, or innovation.

So often Marin is compared to Cézanne. The one resemblance these two men most had was what they did with their days and their lives in achieving masterworks. Like Cézanne, John Marin went out again and again, and forever in groundbreaking search and finding of his own bathers and Mont Sainte-Victoire.

Futurism, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, et cetera—all of which he’s been tagged or associated with and all of which have certain smidgens of validity—are finally irrelevant. To keep it simple—a person looking at a picture on a wall—there’s a dynamic in Marin that’s beyond art critics or art classes or professors or scholars that feels essentially American. “It is America and nowhere else. We are made to experience

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something which is our own,” wrote Paul Strand.iii And very much of its time: that second American Revolution in the aftermath of World War I that played through the Roaring Twenties into the Depression, and brought with it a remarkable outburst of creativity in the arts. He was fecund, perhaps too much so; yet much of his work feels remarkably alive today, freshly ripped from his pads of paper, or unveiled canvasses peppered with surprise.

Marin had a passion for place that has carried beyond his time. It’s ripe with his essential concerns and real locales, and yet lies beyond easy or exact categorization.

There is nothing but realism.

This is the only (ist or ism) left to the artist—for if the work is not real what is it what are you?…

The imaginative storyteller has given you nothing unless he gives you a real picture of his imaginings. The unrealist gives you sawdust for bread.…

A copied sea is not real—The artist having seen the sea—gives us his own seas which are real.

And these symbols of his creation give him in their own right even a greater pleasure than the object seen—he reforms them he rearranges he focuses to his own satisfied inner seeings and longings.iv

Marin is so often thought of as a rugged individualist, a man alone, and there’s a truth to it—he went his own way, clearly. But he was a schooled architect, a part of the remarkable Stieglitz circle, and his crusty, plentiful, Whitman-like writings are seasoned with the mention of artists (Tintoretto, Boudin, Goya), writers (Walton, Chekhov, Twain, Bergson, Lawrence, Wilde), and most of all composers. Among the too many to mention are Beethoven and Mozart, Copland, Stravinsky, Debussy, and especially Haydn.

Critics throughout his life invoked the relationship of his work to music (“As abstract and as universal as the music of Bach,” Duncan Phillips said).v Still, no one captured this essence in words better than Marin himself. In a famous evocation of New York he concluded, “While these powers are at work pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can hear the sound of their strife and there is great music being played.” vi His love of and feeling for music though, whether symphony or jazz or requiem, is finally and best found in his paintings. At

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“The life of today so keyed up so seen so seeming unreal yet so real and the eye with so much to see and the ear to hear— things happening most weirdly upside down— that it’s all—what is it—but the seeing eye and the hearing ear become attuned then comes expression taut taut loose and taut electric staccato” “John Marin By Himself ” in Creative Art, October 1928.

City Movement, c.  Watercolor and graphite on paper, ⅞ x ⅜ inches 9

times, like Charles Burchfield, there even seem to be musical shapes in the placement and pulsing energy of his lines.

Marin’s finest work didn’t happen in a single year or in a single medium. His finest work very often is vitally stirred and rife with movement; it often includes his exploration of the frame around or within a painting that offers at once “the impression of looking through a window” and “breaking through this imagined barrier.”vii His finest work carries his rough-hewn lyricism and quivers of emotion; it is full of feeling. His finest work most of all finds the shoals and beauty and surprise of that territory that is real and not real and that dances movingly and elastically along the edge of abstraction.

These works carry both what he called “an understanding of accidentals” viii and "the beautiful lonesomeness of a work of art” that “can stand many seeings—revealing anew at each seeing.”ix Look at Related to St. Paul’s, New York, 1928 (p. 4). This city, these ripping diagonals, these great buildings alive and living out his very definition of “great music being played.” But what is that yellow, that splotch, that broken yolk in the midst of a masterpiece? And there it is again in several of his tremendous oils of New York, both large and small, done in the thirties. Is it some reflection, a revenant? Is it what Fairfield Porter called “a yellow splash of sun on the ground, like a suicide”? x In The Sea, 1923 (p. 20), what seems simple and representative in each looking again becomes less concrete, evermore bottomless and mysterious. And in the great Schooner and Sea, 1924 (p. 9), is that the land? Is that the waves, even the sail? Is that smear of remarkable red the setting sun, a jutting rock, an errant buoy? What? Schooner and Sea is a painting where there is a “painted boat in a painted sea,” xi and yet it’s one where each brush stroke seems to harbor its own color and unique and separate intention. Yet again, is each touch of paint in fact a piece of a dynamic abstraction, a purely action painting decades ahead of its time? And does it finally matter? No. As Martha Davidson wrote, Marin could paint “with a tumultuous and pantheistic ardor” capturing in watercolor or oil “all the powers of the sea, its terrible beauty, titanic movement and treacherous calm [with] a swift magnificently coordinated calligraphy [that] seems to spring from a source in nature common to the scene itself” xii (pp. 18-21).

In the best of his work, Marin was “no longer dictated by idea, limited by its obstinate propensity for abstraction from reality but rather by

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“It’s a question as to whether the open sight vision—that is of things you see—isn’t better than the inner, I mean, vision things.... I was laying off in my boat, and there was a schooner coming toward me. I made about 20 drawings, none near perfect, but the sight as she loomed up, a thing of life changing with every second, I couldn’t begin to describe the wonder of it....My answer now is that you cannot divorce the two, they are inseparable, they go together. The inner picture being a composite of things seen with the eye, the art object being neither the one or the other but a separate thing in itself.”

John Marin to Alfred Stieglitz, October 7-12, 1920 in Dorothy Norman, ed.

The Selected Writings of John Marin (1949), p. 62.

Schooner and Sea,  Watercolor on paper, ½ x  inches Private Collection 11

an acute perception into the complete and continuous actuality—what William James called ‘the stubborn irreducible facts’…” wrote Louis Finkelstein in linking Willem de Kooning to Marin, plumbing what he felt to be a deep kinship between the two artists, where “a belief in a structure of reality too rich and too complex to be knowable by any preconceptions—a structure of which we being a part, can know only a part, but that in knowing we are a part, we know more truly” binds them together.xiii In that “reality” remain the paintings themselves, still fresh with his love of paint, still fresh with discovery and vibrant life—the smell of the sea, the stench of exhaust and cacophonous excitement of Manhattan, the arid hues of New Mexico, the scrubbed washes yet jagged punch of the White Mountains at Dixville Notch, the rhythm of rain and wind and weather around these places, and the lives they know and hold— apprehended in the instant and touched with a measure of infinity.

i Paul Rosenfeld, “John Marin’s Career,” The New Republic, 90 (Apr. 14, 1937), p.

290; quoted by Ruth E. Fine in Modern Art & America: Alfred Stieglitz & His New York Galleries (2001), Sarah Greenough, ed., p. 341. ii Cleve Gray, ed., Foreword to John Marin by John Marin (1977), p. 8. iii Paul Strand, “American Watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum,” The Arts, 2 (Dec. 1921), p. 152. iv Gray, p. 132. v Duncan Phillips, “7 Americans” (1950), p. 21; quoted in The Eye of Duncan Phillips: A Collection in the Making, (1999) Erika D. Passantino, ed., p. 388. vi Gray, p. 105. vii Leigh Bullard Weisblat in The Eye of Duncan Phillips, p. 382. viii George L.K. Morris letter to the author, quoting Marin. ix Gray, pp. 126, 130. x Fairfield Porter, Art In Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, - (1979), p.

210. xi Gray, p. 96. xii Martha Davidson, ArtNews (Dec. 10, 1938), p. 17; quoted in Modern Art & America: Alfred Stieglitz & His New York Galleries, p. 348. xiii Louis Finkelstein, “Marin and de Kooning,” Magazine of Art (Oct. 1950), pp.

204-205.

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Palisades at Alpine, New Jersey,  Watercolor on paper,  x ¾ inches 13

Deer Isle, Maine, No. ,  Watercolor on paper, ½ x ½ inches 14

Palisades, No. ,  Watercolor on paper,  x  inches 15

“...to be looked at with a looking eye—with a looking eye of many lookings— to see as it slowly reveals itself the process of the revealing—to such giving infinite pleasure, this individual—the artist—releasing the different folds of his seeings at periods of his many livings.”

John Marin quoted in John Marin: A Retrospective Exhibition (1947), p. 12.

Looking Toward Mount Washington, White Mountains, Ammonoosuc River,  Watercolor and charcoal on paper, ½ x  inches 16

Landscape,  Watercolor and charcoal on paper, ½ x  inches 17

Downtown New York from the River,  Oil on canvas board, ¼ x ½ inches 18

New York City Abstraction,  Oil on academy board, ¼ x ½ inches 19

“The wave a breaking on the shore—that starts something in the artist—makes for him to hum—that’s the story—it’s for the artist to make paint wave a breaking on paint shore That takes nothing away from nor adds to the—wave a breaking on the shore for that exists in itself as a beautiful thing—therefore to assume to copy—is vile— That wave a breaking on the shore can as I said—start—the start of a wonderful thing by the artist.”

John Marin to Alfred Stieglitz, August 31, 1940; quoted in Gray, p. 92.

Small Point, Maine,  Watercolor on paper,  x ¼ inches 20

Approaching Fog,  Watercolor on paper,  x  inches 21

The Sea,  Watercolor on paper,  ⅝ x  ¾ inches 22

“‘Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made’ can be factually told by anybody but who can tell it the way Shakespeare tells it—it’s the artist speaking —so that to the artist it's the way of the telling always that concerns him: the painter his way, the sculptor his. The material used—the way used— of a verity—that's the story.”

John Marin quoted in John Marin: A Retrospective Exhibition (1947), p. 13.

Movement in Red, Blue, Green, and Umber,  Oil on canvas,  x  inches 23

Untitled (Landscape),  Watercolor on paper, ¼ x ½ inches 24

West Point, Maine,  Watercolor on paper,  x  ½ inches 25

“The Summer is a thing of the past—strange as it may seem—all summers I have known are things of the past.

Autumn is here—Enjoy it – there’s much trouble in the world—You are not to Enjoy—I refuse—I will Enjoy— I will insist on looking back on the good times I have had—I will insist on looking forward to more good times—to somehow having a little of the wherewithall to carry on again—up here by the ocean next year—there is much to be gotten—by more seeing, by more knowing.”

John Marin quoted in John Marin Memorial Exhibition (1955), n.p.

Autumn Coloring No. , Maine,  Watercolor and ink on paper, ¾ x ½ inches 26

Centerville, Maine,  Watercolor on paper, ½ x  inches 27

CHECKLIST

All works are from the artist’s estate, unless otherwise noted. The following abbreviations are used in the checklist: Reich: Sheldon Reich, John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (1970), 2 vols.

Marin Centennial: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, California; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1970 -71, John Marin /  -: A Centennial Exhibition

New York Fantasy, c. 1912 Watercolor on paper, 17¼ x ½ inches Exhibited: Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1972, John Marin -, pp.

13, 16 no. 25, 17 illus. in color // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1981, John Marin’s New York, no. 13 illus. in color // Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino, Italy, 2006, Metropolis: La città nell’immaginario delle avanguardie -, pp. 126 illus. in color, 127 no. 5, lent by private collection Ex Coll.: estate of the artist; to [Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1981]; to Milton and Adrienne Porter, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until 2002; to Sotheby’s, New York, May 22, 2002, no. 80; to private collection, until the present

West Point, Maine, 1914 Watercolor on paper, 19 x 16½ inches Signed and dated at lower left: Marin / 14 Recorded: Reich, p. 402 no. 14.85

Small Point, Maine, 1915 Watercolor on paper, 14 x 16¼ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 15 Recorded: Reich, p. 411 no. 15.45

Deer Isle, Maine, No. , 1919

The Sea, 1923

Watercolor on paper, 16 ½ x 19 ½ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin / 19

Watercolor on paper, 13⅝ x 16¾ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 23

Recorded: Reich, p. 467 no. 19.6 illus.

Exhibited: Eaton Fine Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1999, Expression and Meaning: The Marine Paintings of John Marin, pp. 16 illus. in color, 62 no. 5

Palisades, No. , 1922 Watercolor on paper, 16 x 19 inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin / 22 Recorded: Reich, p. 510, no. 22.88 illus.

Exhibited: The Intimate Gallery, New York, 1924, Recent Watercolors by John Marin, no. 48, as Palisades on Hudson // University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1948, Tour of Galleries in Michigan // The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, 1953-54, John Marin Memorial Exhibition, no. 9 // Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Pasadena Art Museum, California; and Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, California, 1956, Watercolors from the Ferdinand Howald Collection // Michigan State University, Lansing, 1960, American Art Since  // Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1963, The New Tradition: Modern American Art before  // Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, 1969, Three American Masters of Watercolor: Marin, Demuth, Pascin, no.

20 // The American Federation of Arts, New York, 1970-71, Selections from the Ferdinand Howald Collection: The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, no. 47 // Richard York Gallery, New York, 2001-02, Movement: Marin, pp. 31 illus. in color, 50 no. 23 Ex Coll.: Ferdinand Howald Collection, Columbus, Ohio; to Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Ohio, in 1931; [Kennedy Galleries, New York]; to Arthur and Holly Magill, in 1980; to Sotheby’s, New York, November 30, 2000, no. 75; to private collection, until the present

Recorded: Reich, p. 529 no. 23.71 Exhibited: Montross Gallery, New York, 1924, John Marin, no. 15, as Grey Sea // Barnard College Club of Fairfield County, Stamford Museum, Connecticut, 1961 // Museum of Arts, Science and Industry, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1963, Two Generations of American Artists Since the Armory Show of  Ex Coll.: [Charles Alan Gallery, New York]; to Iola Stetson Haverstick, 19602002; to Sotheby’s, New York, May 22, 2002, no. 68A; to private collection, until the present

Looking Toward Mount Washington, White Mountains, Ammonoosuc River, 1924 Watercolor on paper, 13 x 16 ¾ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 24 Recorded: Reich p. 538 no. 24.34 illus.

Exhibited: Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1972-73, John Marin -, pp. 14 no. 46, 26-27 no. 46 illus.

Schooner and Sea, 1924 Watercolor on paper, 16½ x 20 inches Signed and dated at lower left: Marin / 24 Recorded: Reich, p. 539 no. 24.44 illus. // Ruth E. Fine, John Marin (1990), pp.

185, 187 illus. in color, 189 // Fairfield Porter, Art in its Own Terms, Selected Criticism - (1979), p. 212 Exhibited: Art Galleries, University of California, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Phillips Gallery, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Art, California; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida; University of Georgia, Athens; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1955, John Marin Memorial Exhibition (not in cat.) // Marin Centennial, p. 51 no. 68, lent by Mrs. Dorothy Norman // National Gallery

of Art, Washington, D.C., 1990, Selections and Transformations: The Art of John Marin, pp. 185, 187 illus. in color, 189, lent by Dorothy Norman // Eaton Fine Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1999, Expression and Meaning: The Marine Paintings of John Marin, pp. 18 illus. in color, 62 no. 7, lent by private collection Ex Coll.: the artist; to [An American Place, New York]; to Dorothy Norman, New York; by descent in the family, until 2005 Private Collection

Landscape, 1925 Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 12½ x 16 inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 25 Recorded: Reich, p. 549 no. 25.42 illus.

Exhibited: Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1997, John Marin: Between Realism and Abstraction, no. 12 illus. in color

City Movement, c. 1925-26 Watercolor on paper, 7⅞ x 9⅜ inches Signed at lower right: Marin

Recorded: Reich, p. 598 no. 28.57 illus. // Cleve Gray, ed., John Marin by John Marin (1977), p. 104 illus. in color // Klaus Kertess, Marin in Oil (1987), p. 42

Recorded: Reich, p. 782 no. 50.27 illus.

Exhibited: The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1950 - 51, John Marin, no. 5

Exhibited: The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1963, John Marin, Paintings in Oil,  to  // Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, 1969, John Marin: Etchings and Related Works, Part II – Oils, Watercolors and Drawings, no.

39 illus. // Marin Centennial, no. 77 p. 55 illus. // Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1977, John Marin, Paintings -, no.

9 // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1981, John Marin’s New York, no. 31 illus. in color

Centerville, Maine, 1951

Ex Coll.: the artist; to his son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Marin, Jr., New York; to [Kennedy Galleries, New York]; to Arthur and Holly Magill, 1981; to Sotheby’s, New York, November 30, 2000, no. 54; to private collection, until the present

Untitled (Landscape), 1939 Watercolor on paper, 21¼ x 15½ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 39 Recorded: Reich, p. 699 no. 39.19

Watercolor on paper, 15½ x 21¼ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 51 Recorded: Reich, p. 791 no. 51.5

Approaching Fog, 1952 Watercolor on paper, 14 x 19 inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin / 52 Recorded: Reich, p. 800 no. 52.2 illus.

Exhibited: The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1952- 53, John Marin // Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1953,  Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors, and Drawings, no. 110 // The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1953-54, John Marin, no. 7 // New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, 1967, Focus on Light, no. 56 // Marin Centennial, no. 153 p. 91 // Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1976, John Marin’s Maine -, no. 33 illus. // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1989, John Marin, Paintings and Watercolors  to , no. 34 illus. in color

Recorded: Reich, p. 545 no. 25.19 illus.

Downtown New York from the River, 1940

Palisades at Alpine, New Jersey, 1928

Oil on canvas board, 8¼ x 10½ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 40

Autumn Coloring No. 4, Maine, 1952

Recorded: Reich, p. 706 no. 40.12 illus.

Watercolor and ink on paper, 13¾ x 18½ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin / 52

Watercolor on paper, 17 x 13¾ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 28 Recorded: Reich, p. 596 no. 28.49 illus.

Exhibited: Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1986, John Marin: Watercolors of the s, Drawings from  to , no. 22, illus. in color // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1994, John Marin, no. 13 illus. in color // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1995, John Marin: Land and Sea, no. 16 illus. in color

Ex Coll.: estate of the artist; to [Kennedy Galleries, New York]; to private collection, until the present

New York City Abstraction with Figures, 1940 Oil on academy board, 8¼ x 10½ inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 40 Recorded: Reich, p. 661 no. 34.7 illus.

Related to St. Paul’s, New York, 1928

Movement in Red, Blue, Green, and Umber, 1950

Oil on canvas, 26 ½ x 30 inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 28

Oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inches Signed and dated at lower right: Marin 50

Recorded: Reich, p. 801 no. 52.6 illus.

Exhibited: The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1952-53, John Marin // Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, 1955, Two Friends, Marin and Carles: A Memorial Exhibition, no. 24 // Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, 1956, Contemporary Calligraphers: John Marin, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1988, John Marin’s Autumn, no. 23 illus. in color // Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1989, John Marin, Paintings and Watercolors  to , no. 33 illus. in color

published in conjunction with the exhibition

John Marin the edge of abstraction October 12 – December 16, 

Meredith Ward Fine Art 60 east 66 th street suite 2b new york new york 10021 tel 212 744 7306 fax 212 744 7308 meredithwardfineart@nyc.rr.com cover Schooner and Sea,  (detail)   design The Grenfell Press, New York printing Trifolio, Verona, Italy edition of 2250 publication copyright ©  meredith ward fine art

Meredith Ward Fine Art 60 east 66 th street suite 2b new york ny 10021 tel 212 744 7306 fax 212 744 7308