Lower Manhattan - John Marin

Pissarro
<exchanging gazes> 6

Pissarro

4 June to 15 September 2013

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Autor:: Camille Pissarro
Título:: Self-portrait
Fecha:: 1903

Técnica:: Oil on canvas
Medidas:: 41 x 33 cm.
Ubicacion:: Tate: gift of Lucien Pissarro, the artist's son, 1931.

<exchanging gazes> 6: Reflections. From Van Eyck to Magritte

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From 10 June to 15 September 2013

Autor:: Jan van Eyck
Título:: The Annunciation Diptych: The Archangel Gabriel (detail)
Fecha:: c. 1433-1435

Técnica: Oil on panel: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Nº INV. 137.a (1933.11.1)

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Lower Manhattan

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

Autor:: John Marin
Título:: Lower Manhattan
Fecha:: 1923

Técnica:: Watercolor on paper
Medidas:: 67.5 x 54.5 cm
Úbicacion:: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Numero de inventario: INV. Nr. 661 (1977.82)

More information about this work

The influence of Cubist decomposition can be clearly appreciated in Lower Manhattan, a watercolour dated 1923 and, like many other of Marin’s works, devoted to New York city. Marin shows a view of the lower part of the city and attempts to transmit its energy and chaos. The ever growing metropolis began to be a source of inspiration for painters, photographers and writers like Walt Whitman, whose poetic vision of New York as a confluence of energies greatly influenced the early American avant-gardists.

The artist combines Cubist fragmentation with the Italian Futurists’ views of the seething metropolis, aided by the watercolour medium that enables him to translate his impressions rapidly. Marin published an explanatory note in the catalogue of his exhibition held at the 291 gallery in 1913, admitting that, like the Italian Futurists, he was interested in depicting not what could be seen in the city but its inner forces: “I see great forces at work; great movements; the large buildings and the small buildings; the warring of the great and small; influences of one mass on another greater or smaller mass. Feelings are aroused which gives me the desire to express the reaction of these ‘pull forces’”He. went on to explain that “while these powers are at work pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can hear the sound of their strife and there is great music being played. And so I try to express graphically what a great city is doing”.

Paloma Alarcó

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