Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934
Object-John Marin, Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline
One of America’s most popular modernists, John Marin fashioned a personal vocabulary for expressing the vitality of urban landscapes in both oils and watercolors. Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline presents the city as an assemblage of colors and shapes that suggest the energy of the metropolis. His reduction of familiar forms to their essential lines and planes indicates an indebtedness to cubism that is personalized by his use of bright colors and dynamic brushwork. Trained as an architect, Marin frequently used devices within his compositions to frame or enclose forms. The image presents a series of frames-within-the-frame: the black outlines around the forms of the bridge, tugboat, and sailboat contain and control the explosive energy of the artist’s lines and brushwork. To distinguish this work as an oil painting (rather than a watercolor), Marin applied a thin black wash to the simple wood molding of the frame and added elongated dabs of white at regular intervals.
Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.
Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934
Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917

Construction, 1915

Peinture, 1917–18

Painting No. 50, 1914–15

Nature Symbolized #3: Steeple and Trees, 1911–12

Sails, 1911–12

Welcome to Our City, 1921

Boy with Cow, 1921

Super Table, 1925

Purple and Green Leaves, 1927

Boat Going through Inlet, c. 1929

The Green Chair, 1928

Politics, 1931

Brooklyn Bridge, on the Bridge, 1930

Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934

Red Amaryllis, 1937

Room Space, 1937–38

Adolescence, 1947

Highway, 1953

Topcat Boy, 1970

Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

Passing Show, 1951

Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986