User:Kinge13

Life and work
Martin Beck is an American painter, living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. Beck’s “social conscience grew up with him about 20 blocks from the famous suburban Love Canal eco-disaster in Niagara Falls, NY.” Beck received a BFA from State University of New York at Buffalo. in 1986 and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992. Martin Beck is a noted artist who received two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships, (1994, 2000). The artist is featured on the Discover Jersey Arts Artists Gallery.

Martin Beck's solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Arts Center, Cinncinati, OH; The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ; and the Birke Gallery, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. Group exhibitions include 8-Hour Drawings at Allegheny College Penelec-Bowman-Megahan Art Galleries, Meadville, PA; 27 Curators, Concept Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; La Linea Dibujos Contemporaneos, Museo de Art Moderno de la Republica Dominica, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Figure and Symbol, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY; and X-Sightings, Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Beck’s exhibitions have been reviewed in ArtPapers, The New York Times , The Sunday Star Ledger and has also been featured in American Artist, (July 1999).

Beck’s work can be found in private collections primarily in New York, NY, Pittsburgh, PA and Santa Monica, CA. His portrait commissions include corporate clients such as Carnegie Mellon University Highlands Circle, and private clients

Websites
Beckstudio.com

Myspace

Absolutearts Portfolio

Quotes
“The elegant simplifications of the human form, picked out with Beck's layered color, is reminiscent of the 19th-century Munich school, a style conceived to ennoble the human form and the very atmosphere it walks through. Beck crosses this up with his ugly folks and perverse demi-narratives. It is just the unpredictability of beauty and disgust mixing that arrests the viewer -- and sometimes makes him or her mad as a wet hen.” Dan Bischoff, The Sunday Star-Ledger

“Mr. Beck says he once heard a visitor to one of his shows characterize the work as ‘Norman Rockwell gone bad.’ That sums up his territory: Mr. Beck seems determined to take America's pulse at the end of the century, and it races. Mr. Beck's sturdily built characters tend to smile a lot, but it's obvious that the smiles mask anxieties.” William Zimmer, The New York Times

“This artist is not afraid to paint at the top of his lungs. Beck's handling of pigment is professional, but everywhere subordinated to the themes he's painting. Its chalky flatness works almost as if he's stressing the fact that his painting is no Frenchified thing, but real American art.” Dan Bischoff, The Sunday Star-Ledger

“Beck's complex figure compositions bring baroque spatial dynamics into the back yards of America. His individuals are either unhappily sexualized or awkwardly self aware, or both. They strain under the demands of pleasure, always terrified that they will reveal some forbidden part of their private psyches.” Richard Huntington, Buffalo News

Solo Exhibitions
Eclectic Art & Objects Gallery, March, 2009. Pittsburgh, PA.

Chamot Gallery, Modern Romance. 3/15/2001 - 4/29/2001. Jersey City, NJ.

Discover Jersey Arts, Discover Jersey Arts Online Showcase. 2/1/2001 - 3/1/2001. Trenton, NJ.

Consolidated Arts at Historic Downtown S.I.D. Office Gallery, Black Drawings and Other Works. 9/25/2000 - 12/14/2000. Jersey City, NJ.

Mercer County Community College, Modern Romance. 1/9/1999 - 2/11/1999. Trenton, NJ.

Jersey City Museum, White. 3/11/1998 - 5/30/1998. Jersey City, NJ. Catalogue

David J. Brodsky Gallery, Recent Work. 9/26/1995 - 10/27/1995. Princeton, NJ.

Birke Gallery, Recent Work. 9/1/1995 - 9/21/1995. Huntington, WV.

The Contemporary Arts Center, Recent Work. 6/7/1995 - 8/6/1995. Cincinnati, OH.

Hewlitt Gallery, MFA Thesis Exhibition. 4/22/1992 - 7/29/1992. Pittsburgh, PA.

Carson Street Gallery, Recent Work. 4/14/1992 - 4/20/1992. Pittsburgh, PA.

Group Exhibitions
University Art Gallery, Department of Studio Arts Faculty Exhibition. 10/1/2008 - 11/21/2008. Pittsburgh, PA.

The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Incognito 2008. 5/3/2008. Santa Monica, CA.

The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Incognito 2007. 4/28/2007. Santa Monica, CA.

Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon, 100% Centennial. 1/20/2006 - 3/5/2006. Pittsburgh, PA.

The Santa Monica Museum of Art, incognito 2005. 12/10/2005. Santa Monica, CA.

Allegheny College Penelec - Bowman - Megahan Art Galleries, 8-Hour Drawings. 9/6/2005 - 10/4/2005. Meadville, PA.

Artists Image Resource, The War Room. 10/15/2004 - 10/17/2004. Pittsburgh, PA.

Hunterdon Museum of Art, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship Exhibition 1999 & 2000. 12/3/2000 - 1/28/2001. Clinton, NJ. catalogue

Concept Gallery, 30 Curators. 2/10/2000 - 4/8/2000. Pittsburgh, PA.

City Without Walls, 18th Annual Metro Show. 1999. Newark, NJ.

Museo de Art Moderno de la Republica Dominica, La Linea Dibujos Contemporaneos. 7/1/1998 - 8/30/1998. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. catalog

Side Street Projects, Splice. 9/20/1997 - 12/15/1997. Santa Monica, CA.  Catalog

Bridge Cafe, In the Shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. 9/26/1996 - 10/30/1996. New York, NY.

MMC, Figure and Symbol. 9/10/1996 - 10/12/1996. New York, NY.

Gallery 313, Sick Again. 6/28/1996 - 7/19/1996. New York, NY.

Anderson Gallery, X-Sightings. 5/17/1996 - 7/17/1996. Buffalo, NY.

Noyes Museum, 1994 - 1995 Fellowship Exhibition. 1/21/1996 - 3/24/1996. Oceanville, NJ. Catalogue

Kunsthälle Hamburg, The Young Riders. 2/1/1994 - 3/1/1994. Hamburg, Germany.

The Contemporary Arts Center, The Figure as Fiction. 12/3/1993 - 1/23/1994. Cincinnati, OH. Catalogue

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Group A. 7/24/1992 - 8/16/1992. Pittsburgh, PA.

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Art Beyond. 3/23/1991 - 4/21/1991. Pittsburgh, PA.