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= Keith Morrow Martin, American, 1911-1983 =

Keith Martin, an artist of international stature was born in Lincoln Nebraska in 1911, lived in Baltimore for 35 years and died in Cockeysville, Maryland in 1983. He was 72.

Mr. Martin’s 50-year career in the fields of painting, drawing and collage brought him recognition in Europe as well as America. He had one-man shows in Paris and Berlin as well as New York, Washington and Baltimore, and his works are included in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of American Art in Washington and the Neuef Nationalgalerie in West Berlin. The Baltimore Museum of art owns some 30 of his works, and the Peale Museum almost 100 works. His papers are part of the Syracuse University Library.

An abstract and surrealist artist, Mr. Martin was primarily influenced the art of Matisse, Picasso and Paul Klee, and he probably showed most strongly the influence of Klee. His work and particularly the joyfully lyrical collages for which he was perhaps best in later later years, express, as art critic John Canaday has written about Klee, an “innocence arrived through sophistication.”

Brenda Richardson, assistant director for art and curator of painting and sculpture at the Baltimore Museum of Art, organized a major retrospective of Mr. Martin’s collages a the museum in 1977. She had this to say about him. “Keith was a fine and dedicated artist with a very special, private visibility. His work with filled with light and color, and a refinement of line which was simultaneously powerful and delicate. There was an acute eye and a rigorous mind in this work, must most of all these works revealed a caring and sensitive person intensely attuned to the visual world around him. For decades he has been a major artistic force in Baltimore, and his generous influence will be much missed.”

Mr. Martin was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in January, 1911. He started drawing at the age of four. He attended the University of Nebraska and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1933-1934 spent a year studying in Europe. From 1934 to 1941 he lived in New York where, among other works, he designed ballet costumes for various companies including the Metropolitan Opera Company.

From 1941 to 1945 he served in the United States Army in Iceland, England, France and Germany, first in the camouflage engineers and then in the Army education program. He emerged with the rack of staff sergeant. In 1945 he had a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Vendome in Paris which, he later said, was the first one-man art exhibition given to an American after the liberation of Paris. Gertrude Stein visited the show and pronounced herself impressed with the work.

From 1945 to 1948 he lived in his native Nebraska. In 1948 he came to Baltimore for a visit and decided to leave there. For 35 years he lived with his friend David McIntyre, a former member of the staff of the Baltimore Museum who retired as its assistant director in 1975.

In 1948 a painting included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s show, “Abstract and Surrealist Art in America”, won the Blaire Purchase Award. In subsequent years he showed and often won awards in regional art exhibitions a the Baltimore Museum. His works were also exhibited at the Duveen/Graham Gallery in New York, the Barbara Fieldler Gallery in Washington, the Haber/Theodore Gallery in New York, and the International Gallery and the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore.

In 1957 he was included int he exhibition “Golden Years of American Drawing, 1905-1956” a the Brooklyn Museum. In 1959 he as awarded ta Ford Foundation national art competition prize. In 1967 he won a purchase award from the Benedictine Collection at Fencamp, France. In 1978 his work was exhibited at the Neuef Nationalgalerie in West Berlin. In 1981 he as awarded an honorary doctorate in fine art by the Maryland Institute, College of Art.

In 1980, he was rendered virtually blind by diabetes retinopathy, and thought he would never work again. But early in 1982 he began making collages with the five per cent of sight left to him, and completed 75 new works. Some were shown in a one-man exhibition at the Grimaldis Gallery.

His last works displayed no bitterness or disappointment with life, but were as colorful and happy as ever. The sweetness of his nature was shown by a remark he made on his blindness shortly before he died. “People say ‘Oh it must be worst of all to be an artist and be blind.’ he said. But a man who sweeps the streets needs his eyes as much as I do.”

Derived from the obituary prepared by John Dorsey, Art Critic for the Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1983.