JOHN MARIN (1870-1953)

Trained both as an architect and as an artist, Marin was a superlative draftsman who began to make etchings in Paris in 1905, utilizing a newly acquired press. Upon his return to New York in 1911, Marin created his first two etchings of the Brooklyn Bridge, a marvel of Gothic architecture and modern engineering completed in 1883. He returned to this subject again in 1913 when, perhaps influenced by the Armory Show held in New York that year, and by his association with the circle of modernist artists at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery, he introduced an abstracted, Cubist vocabulary, marking the beginning of his mature style. The present lot demonstrates how Marin exploited the linear potential of etching to animate a towering urban structure. He continued to explore the dynamism of the Brooklyn Bridge as a subject in his prints until 1944, creating eighteen images in all.