An accomplished watercolorist of the Maine coast and eastern cities, Marin journeyed west to Taos, New Mexico, in 1929 and again in 1930. In his two summers there, he executed almost one hundred watercolors of the area’s expansive landscape and quick-changing weather as well as the customs of local Indigenous people. Storm, Taos Mountain, New Mexico is a mix of the natural and the abstract: mountain ridges, dark clouds, and lashing rain transform into a play of geometric shapes, zigzags, and billowing lines. At the bottom edge, Marin adds a lightning-like design clearly inspired by Southwest Indigenous art, a powerful influence for many American artists experimenting with abstraction.
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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right, in watercolor): Marin 30
the artist (from 1930; to Stieglitz); Alfred Stieglitz, New York (probably 1936–d. 1946; his estate, 1946–49; gift to MMA)
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "John Marin: Watercolors, Oil Paintings, Etchings," October 19–November 22, 1936, no. 131.
New York. An American Place. "Beyond All 'Isms': 20 Selected Marins, 1908–1938," October 15–November 21, 1939, no catalogue.
Albuquerque. University of New Mexico Art Museum. "Marin in New Mexico: 1929 & 1930," November 18–December 29, 1968, unnumbered cat. (fig. 61).
San Antonio. Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute. "Marin in New Mexico: 1929 & 1930," February 7–March 7, 1969, unnumbered cat.
Fort Worth. Amon Carter Museum. "Marin in New Mexico: 1929 & 1930," March 21–May 12, 1969, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Paintings and Watercolors by John Marin," February 3–March 29, 1981, no catalogue.
Canberra. Australian National Gallery. "20th Century Masters from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," March 1–April 27, 1986, unnumbered cat. (p. 51).
Brisbane. Queensland Art Gallery. "20th Century Masters from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," May 7–July 1, 1986, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "American Landscape Painting," April 4–August 13, 1989, no catalogue.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "Selections and Transformations: The Art of John Marin," January 28–April 15, 1990, unnumbered cat. (fig. 219).
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890–1950," October 29, 2006–January 28, 2007, unnumbered cat. (fig. 132).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890–1950," March 4–June 3, 2007, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," October 13, 2011–January 2, 2012, no. 158.
Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul Rosenfeld, and Harold Rugg, ed. America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait. Garden City, N. Y., 1934, pl. XIXD.
William Schack. "On Abstract Painting." American Magazine of Art 27 (September 1934), pp. 474–75, ill.
Martha Davidson. "Marin: Master of a Minor Medium." Art News 35 (October 24, 1936), p. 12.
Edward Alden Jewell. "John Marin's Art in Two Exhibitions." New York Times (October 17, 1939), p. 29.
Carolyn Wynne. "Aspects of Space: John Marin and William Faulkner." American Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Spring 1964), p. 68.
Sheldon Reich. John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné. Tucson, 1970, vol. 2, p. 627, fig. 30.58.
Patricia Janis Broder. The American West: The Modern Vision. Boston, 1984, p. 190, ill.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 14, 18, fig. 13.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, p. 26, fig. 13.
W. Jackson Rushing. Native American Art and the New York Avant–Garde: A History of Cultural Primitivism. Austin, 1995, p. 75, ill.
Lois Palken Rudnick. Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture. Albuquerque, 1996, p. 130, ill.
Katja Fauth. Modernist Visions in Taos: Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Artists of the Stieglitz Circle. Marburg, Germany, 2009, pp. 216, 235, fig. 53.
Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm. John Marin's Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2010, p. 18, fig. 5.
Jessica Murphy inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 183, 274, no. 158, ill. (color).
Jeffrey Richmond-Moll. "Roots/Routes: Religion and Modern Mobility in American Art, 1900–1935." PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2019, p. 298 n. 141.
John Marin (American, Rutherford, New Jersey 1870–1953 Cape Split, Maine)
1913
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