Marina Stern
American, 1928
New York based artist, Marina Stern, moved away from her early work in abstract expressionism in the 1970s, and migrated towards a Precisionist style highly influenced by early modernists like Charles Sheeler. The subjects of her paintings, such as in White Tanks, are often utilitarian architectural structures, both industrial and agricultural. Rendered in a minimalist, geometric style, Stern draws a heightened attention to these sometimes overlooked aspects of our built environment.
Stern was a uniquely synthetic realist painter who made a successful transition from her early “talking” pop paintings into a photo-realism heavily mediated by minimalism. Her work is hard to characterize, as without looking pop, realist or minimalist, achieves an impressive aesthetic intersection of all three. Through the places and paths of the social environment, both urban and rural, and in the cathedrals 20th century industry, Stern’s contemporary messages are constituted through the icons of cultural memories, the nostalgia for progress, and the history of habitation and inhabitation of the earth. The artist had five one woman exhibitions at the Forum Gallery, New York, as well as numerous solo shows in Boston, Chicago, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Stern was born in Venice, Italy, and educated in Italy, Switzerland and England. She became an American citizen and lived in New York City since World War II, completing her education at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League, where she studied with Kuniyoshi. Her work is represented in a number of public and private collections including, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; The New York Port Authority, and Arnold & Company, Boston.
Stern was a uniquely synthetic realist painter who made a successful transition from her early “talking” pop paintings into a photo-realism heavily mediated by minimalism. Her work is hard to characterize, as without looking pop, realist or minimalist, achieves an impressive aesthetic intersection of all three. Through the places and paths of the social environment, both urban and rural, and in the cathedrals 20th century industry, Stern’s contemporary messages are constituted through the icons of cultural memories, the nostalgia for progress, and the history of habitation and inhabitation of the earth. The artist had five one woman exhibitions at the Forum Gallery, New York, as well as numerous solo shows in Boston, Chicago, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Stern was born in Venice, Italy, and educated in Italy, Switzerland and England. She became an American citizen and lived in New York City since World War II, completing her education at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League, where she studied with Kuniyoshi. Her work is represented in a number of public and private collections including, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; The New York Port Authority, and Arnold & Company, Boston.
