Book Review Page

 

Fred Martin

  1927 - 2022 (biography)

1957  

watercolor with distemper 

8 x 10 3/8" image size 

unsigned 

 

artist's poem painted onto the sheet in pigment; exhibition label on original mat: "Royal Marks Gallery / 19 East 71st Street, New York, UN 1-3400 / Artist: Martin, Fred / Title: Book Review Page / Year: 1957 / Media: w/c/distemper, collage, w/c" 

 

thin sheet of wove from a book or periodical (page title reads "Book Reviews") 

 

 

23844 

$500.00 

Bay Area-based artist Fred Martin has juxtaposed a poem and symbols against the typeset page of a book review periodical. "And in the quiet places of the sun and moon, to the tinkling water's fall, while the gold singing bird stays [...?] song and the lion lies down with the lamb I will return to my own true home". An apropos review beneath this poem refers to a book on ancient architecture, symbolism, and iconography.

On the verso of this piece, which is mounted to matboard, is an exhibition label from Martin's 1967 show at the Royal Marks Gallery in New York. Royal S. Marks was a Detroit-born concert pianist turned gallery owner who opened his Upper East Side venture in 1962. By the late 1960s he'd established his gallery as a destination for artists and collectors alike, with a specialty in American and South American Modernism.