Eugene James Martin: Man of Color features the unique and colorful works of late artist Eugene Martin.
The skill and wry humor of this African-American artist is a striking celebration of cultural reflection. His work has been exhibited widely in Europe and has many connections to the work of Kandinsky, Klee, and Miro. Walter Anderson was also well aware of their work during the first half of the 20th century. Both Martin and Anderson often reduced figures to an economical one or two lines.
Eugene J. Martin’s art is best known for his complex mixed media collages on paper, his often gently humorous pencil, pen and ink drawings, and his paintings on paper and canvas that may incorporate whimsical allusions to animal, machine and structural imagery among area of “pure”, constructed, or lyrical abstraction.
Eugene James Martin did not belong to any school or art movement, remaining an individualist throughout his life. After attending the Corcoran School of Art from 1960-1963, he became a professional fine arts painter, considering artistic integrity his only guide. He briefly lived in Chapel Hill, North Caroline, from 1990-94, returned to Washington DC, and in 1996 moved to Lafayette, Louisiana with his wife, a biologist, whom he married in 1988.
Eugene Martin’s works of art can be found in numerous private art collections throughout the world, and are included in the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana; the Stowitts Museum & Library in Pacific Grove, California; the Munich Museum of Modern Art; the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; the Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art in Savannah, Georgia; and the Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art at the University of Delaware.
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