Anthony Martino: New Sights/New Sounds. Portraits and Paintings of the Jersey Shore

Danielle mixed media on canvas 56 x 40 inches

Major Exhibition by American Artist Anthony Martino to Open in Downtown Manhattan on May 21, 2015

New Sights/New Sounds: Portraits and Paintings of the Jersey Shore

May 21-June 7, 2015
Opening reception Thursday, May 21, 6-9 pm

Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune Street
New York, NY 10014

Gallery hours: Wed-Sun, 1-6 pm; closed Mon and Tues. All events are free and open to the public.

ANTHONY MARTINO, a contemporary American artist, revitalizes and infuses with new energy portraiture from life and plein air painting. The portraits are influenced by an environment of music shared by artist and sitter during their creation.

Anthony Martino’s exhibit demonstrates the impact music has on painting for an artist deeply immersed in sound, specializing in jazz on the edges of performance art. He paints the quantum physics of a visual field. Matter is both a particle and a wave in his art. Forms are both solid and fluid. Against strong dark backgrounds, Martino constructs lines and deconstructs spaces that describe the mystery of the sitter while unfolding a map of their features. He sees his work in sync with avant-garde jazz musicians who believe playing music is a paradox of traveling in time.

Martino also exhibits an accomplished repertoire of New Jersey beachscapes. These colorful configurations of bodies in atmospheric space celebrate the Jersey Shore and its unique shimmering diffusion of sunlight. He is an alchemist of light

with materials such as gouache, casein, tempera, watercolor, acrylics and even distemper, an ancient medium that mixes egg white, rabbit skin glue and powdered pigments heated to a precise temperature, that few artists use today.

This exhibit is a tribute to his years of experimental craftsmanship and creativity. He is an artist’s artist, yet any viewer will find delight in his work.

— J. Taylor Basker, Ph.D., art historian

Anthony Martino
Anthony Martino’s direction as a portraitist and plein air painter was established early in his career, winning him fellowships to Artists for the Environment in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Columbia, New Jersey; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Rooftops, a cityscape of Soho painted above the studio of his friend and mentor, the late Robert De Niro, Sr., won the National Academy of Design’s S.J. Truman Prize for a Painter Under 35.

Later, Self Portrait won the National Academy’s Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, was exhibited at the Seattle Museum of Art, and later acquired for the permanent collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson.

Anthony Martino has exhibited in solo shows throughout the country at venues including the Freedman Hackett Gallery,San Francisco; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA; the Asbury Park Public Library, Asbury Park, NJ; and Wenniger Graphics, Provincetown, MA; and in New York City at the Salena Gallery, Long Island University, Brooklyn; the Bowery Gallery; 20/20 Gallery; The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy; NYU Langone Medical Center; and the Westbeth Gallery.

He has exhibited nationally in group shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS; Hoyu Bussan, Tokyo; Freedman Hackett Galley, San Francisco; the Pennsylva- nia College of Art & Design, Lancaster, PA; The Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY; Edward Hopper House Art Center, Nyack, NY; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Lancaster Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA: Maryland Institute College of Art,
Baltimore; Rosemary Berkel and Harry L. Crisp II Museum, Cape Girardeau, MO; Delaware College of Art and Design, Wilmington, DE; Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Roanoke, VA; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN; Gibson Gallery, SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY; University Art Museum, SUNY Albany, NY; and many others.

His work has also been exhibited extensively in the New York City area, including at the American Academy of Arts and Letters; National Academy of Design; Forum Gallery; Lori Bookstein Fine Art; Kouros Gallery; The Museum at FIT; The Durst Foundation; Newhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Staten Island; and many others. He exhibits in traveling shows with the Zeuxis Associa- tion of Still Life Painters; and the annual exhibitions of the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic, where his paintings of the Jersey Shore at Ocean Grove have won frequent honors, including the John J. Newman Award and Shiva/Richeson prizes.

Anthony Martino’s work is in the collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; ExxonMobil; Hoyu Bussan, Tokyo. New York City collections include the former Shearson Lehman Hutton; Fashion Institute of Technology; The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy; Bellevue Hospital Center; and private collectors.

Anthony Martino is featured in 100 New York Painters, by Cynthia Maris Dantzic, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.; Drawing Dimensions: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Cynthia Maris Dantzic, Prentice Hall (Seated Figure); and in personal contributions to Robert De Niro, Sr., 1922-1993; exhibition catalog, La Musée d’Art et d’Industrie de Roubaix, Paris: Somogy éditions d’art; and Robert De Niro, Sr., Salander-O’Reilly (frontispiece, Baltimore Harbor). A book of his digital prints, Color Keys: The Jersey Shore at Ocean Grove, can be previewed online at www.blurb.com/b/2985940-color-keys-the-jersey-shore-at-ocean-grove.

He earned a B.F.A., magna cum laude, on scholarships from the Maryland Institute College of Art in his native Baltimore and a M.F.A. on fellowships from Parsons/The New School for Design. He has been a visiting artist at SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY; and the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. He teaches on the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology and lives and works in New York City.

The Westbeth Gallery is a nonprofit gallery, located at 55 Bethune Street in the Far West Village, four blocks south of the High Line and the new home of the Whitney Museum. The gallery presents the work of resident artists and independently curated exhibitions.

Gallery Email: westbethg@gmail.com
Artist website: anthonymartino.com
Facebook: Anthony Martino Studio

Media Contact
Judy Cuttler
judycuttler@gmail.com
212 691 5033