Chris Martin

Chris Martin was born in 1954 in Washington D.C., USA. From 1972 till 1975 he studies Fine Arts at Yale University, New Haven. In the early eighties Martin moves to Brooklyn, New York, where he still lives and works today. His monographic exhibition at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2011) and a monumental presentation at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen’s Submarine Wharf in Rotterdam (2013) put him on the European map. Martin's oeuvre has built new bridges across the rift between American and European modernist and postmodernist painting, and his art has been wide open to other cultural influences. Taking up the traditions of German Romanticism and Abstract Expressionism, Martin has drawn inspiration from indigenous, far Eastern, and African-American cultures, especially from soul and funk. He has abandoned notions of imperative purity in Color Field painting and reconciled their aesthetic with the popular culture, street art, and eclecticism of our time. Chris Martin has written significant contributions for the Brooklyn Rail Magazine (www.brooklynrail.org), where he publishes articles on abstract painting as well as interviews with artists like Brice Marden, Thomas Nozkowski, Helmut Federle and James Siena.