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Joseph De Martini

Joseph De Martini, Oil on Canvas circa 1940-42

Documentation

Signed

Origin

United States

Period

1920-1949

Materials

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

W.	50 in;	H.	40 in;	D.	3 in;
W.	127 cm;	H.	101.6 cm;	D.	7.62 cm;

Condition

Excellent. Oil on canvas retains original artists burnished aluminum gilding on wood frame.

Creation Date

circa 1940-42

Description

Joseph De Martini was born in Mobile, Alabama, but spent most of his childhood in Hoboken, New Jersey. The son of a fisherman, De Martini was educated only as far as grammar school, but he showed an interest in art at an early age. He moved to New York City where he took classes at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design with Leon Kroll and Ivan Olinsky.
Giving equal attention to interiors (like darkened theaters) and coastal scenes of New England (including shipwrecks), De Martini created romantic interpretations of everyday life. He was in his prime as an artist when abstraction became a popular style. A writer for Art Digest wrote of de Martini in 1942: “With painting-shadows and strong dark lines, he can create a pattern of great strength without declaring for abstraction and without losing the romance of place which gives his paintings their greatest appeal.”
Self reflection occupied his visual interest over the entirety of his life ranging from a youthful 1930 image to that of his later years in his striped bathrobe, standing stalwartly like a classical column. The three themes in De Martini’s art were the sea, the studio, the man.
De Martini was an associate member of the National Academy of Design and a member of the Audubon Artists and the American Artists Congress. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1951 and taught at the University of Georgia from 1952-53. Towards the end of his career he stopped showing his work in order to devote his time completely to painting.

It retains the original artists frame and has been cleaned and conserved by Yost Conservation studios in Oxford Connecticut.

His work is in the permanent collections of: Addison Gallery of American Art
Baltimore Museum of Fine Art
Boca Raton Museum of Art
Boston MFA
Butler Institute of American Art
Chrysler Museum of Art
City Art Museum of St. Louis
Denver Art Museum
Farnsworth Museum
IBM
Metropolitan Museum MoMA
New Britain Museum
Pepsi-Cola Collection
Phillips Memorial Gallery San Diego Museum of Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum
the State Department, Washington, DC
Tucson Museum of Art Walker Art Center

Styles / Movements

Abstract Expressionism, Modernism, Other

Incollect Reference Number

140458