Marin in the White Mountains

John Marin is a pioneer in American modernism and abstraction. Marin’s contributions are widely recognized amongst an international audience, some 70 years after he became the first American to exhibit at the Venice Biennale in 1950. He is well-known for his views of the two places where he spent most of his life–a summer retreat on the northern coast of Maine and New York City which was the center of his commercial efforts with gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. Marin in the White Mountains shares more than a dozen watercolors painted along one of the artist's regular sojourns as he transitioned between his two worlds of Maine and New York. The exhibition features work from the Marin family collection and estate and includes a series of richly patterned and freely painted watercolors of the New England countryside in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Marin’s passion for mountain scenery is revealed in these paintings. The mountains become a primary focus of his body of work and parallel his New York City pictures as a means to explore themes of representation and abstraction.