Charles James Martin (artist) - Selected Exhibitions and Reviews

Selected Exhibitions and Reviews

• American Water Color Society Exhibition, National Arts Club, 1916

There are two “Interiors” in the exhibition which provide contrast and text. One shall be nameless The other is a picture by Charles J. Martin in the alcove. Mr. Martin has approached his subject first of all in the spirit of an artist with analyses to make. He has taken the haphazard of nature and reduced it to orderly plan. Or to speak more truly, he has taken the fragment of nature that presented itself to him at some one moment and recreated it until by virtue of art it became a whole, an organism, in which every part is essential to the others. He has seen his room as a pattern in which the black stove with its aggressive pipe is balanced by a black chair or something, and beautiful bright threads of color run in and out of large neutral patches of violet and dull yellow. A rug designer would see how handsome it is. But the artist in this instance has had also a sense of humor and a conscience, and since his room is a human abode he has analyzed its character and made of his work a witty and penetrating comment. That is what makes it so difficult to forgive. The makers of patterns are not all so successful as Mr. Martin.

• Columbia Teachers College, 1916

Mr. Martin's method makes water color a thing to reckon with at a distance, a medium capable of decorative effect. He pays tribute to the peculiar character of the medium, its sparkling idiosyncrasy, by his use of the white outline, which detaches the masses of color from one another, keeping them in one plane as effectively as the black bounding line in favor with one school of modern painters; and which has the advantage of giving the white ground of the paper a chance to play its enlivening part in the general scheme.

• Philadelphia Water Color Exhibition, 1916

• MacDowell Club Sketch Exhibition, 1917

• Pictorial Photographers of America Exhibition, Detroit Museum of Art, January 4–28, 1918

• Painter-Gravers Of America Exhibition, 1919

• Provincetown Art Association Exhibition, 1927

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1929

• International Water Color Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, May 2 - June 2, 1929

• Provincetown Art Association Exhibition, 1931

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1931

Charles J. Martin, well known for his freedom from academic restraint in his method of teaching design, achieves an equally unhampered expression in his creative work. “The Factory” is a boldly conceived design, especially rich in its use of resonant blacks. In contrast to the rugged construction of this work is the fluent character of the “Sand Pit,” where the harmonic tour de force of combining warm and cold tonalities is skillfully accomplished.

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1932.

Possibly the most striking paper in the show is the landscape by Charles Martin. Mr. Martin, a professor of painting at Columbia, has an original and powerful technique. He achieves architectonic pattern without any important loss in realism.

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1933

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1934

• Delphic Studios, New York City, 1934

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1936

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1937

• Morton Galleries, New York City, 1938

• Brooklyn Museum Art School, 1949