17 Facts About John Marin

John Marin was an early American modernist visual artist.

John Marin is known for his abstract landscape paintings and watercolors.

John Marin's mother died nine days after his birth, and he was raised by two aunts in Weehawken, New Jersey.

John Marin attended the Stevens Institute of Technology for a year, and tried unsuccessfully to become an architect.

From 1899 to 1901, John Marin attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

John Marin studied at the Art Students League of New York.

In 1905, John Marin went to Europe, initially traveling to Paris.

John Marin exhibited his work in the Salon, where he got his first exposure to modern art.

John Marin traveled through Europe for six years, and painted in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and Italy.

In 1909, John Marin held his first one-man exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery in New York City.

John Marin had been introduced to Stieglitz by the photographer Edward Steichen, whom Marin in turn had met through the painter Arthur B Carles.

John Marin spent his first summer in Maine in 1914 and almost immediately the rocky coast there became one of his favorite subjects.

John Marin had a retrospective show in 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Late in life John Marin achieved tremendous prestige as an American painter, an elder statesman of American art.

John Marin was a resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey for many years, and maintained a summer home in Addison, Maine, where he died in 1953.

John Marin was among the first American artists to make abstract paintings.

The largest collection of Marin's paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and photographs are at the Colby College Museum of Art, the John Marin Collection, given to the college by John Marin Jr.