Background
Martha Diamond was born in 1944 in New York, United States.
- Photos
- Works
Main Photo
Martha Diamond
- Photos
- Works
painting
Light Blue Cityscape no. 4
Untitled
City with Yellow Sky
Battery Park City
Sun
Yellow Sky
Cityscape with Blue Shadows #3
Mist
Green Sky
Untitled (Skyscrapers)
Martha Diamond
Edit ProfileEducation
Martha received a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College in Minnesota, and an Master of Arts from New York University.
Career
Diamond is a longtime veteran of the downtown New York art world, and she’s maintained a studio practice in the same Bowery loft since she took up residence in 1969. Her signature approach to representational painting was forged in a crucible of artists and poets who championed the centrality of personal experience in creative production, paying particular attention to the ways in which one’s perceptions of New York City could be translated into art.
Alongside painters like Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, and Larry Rivers, as well as poets like Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, and Peter Schjeldahl, Diamond worked at the margins of the city at a time when light and space were in ample supply. In a manner that differentiates her from her counterparts, however, Diamond has continually chronicled the changing character of New York’s urban environment, recalling the city’s most celebrated documentarians, including photographers like Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and Paul Strand. From her Bowery loft, Diamond makes images of the built environment that teeter on the verge of dissolution, in the foggy glow of an early morning sunrise, or the incandescent pattern thrown from the windows of a residential high rise.
Martha Diamond lives and works in New York. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations in the United States, including exhibitions at Alexandre Gallery, New York; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick; Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson; the New York Studio School, New York; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland; Robert Miller Gallery, New York; and Sue Scott Gallery, New York. Diamond’s work is frequently featured in major group exhibitions both stateside and abroad, including shows at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; the Colby College museum of Art, Waterville; CUE Art Foundation, New York; the Dedalus Foundation, New York; the Nagoya Museum of Art, Nagoya; the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago; Skarstedt Gallery, New York; Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Her work is currently held in numerous public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; Colby College Museum of Art; Fogg Museum, Harvard University; Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; Museum of Modern Art in New York; Museum of the City of New York; Pérez Art Museum; Staatliche Museum; and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Achievements
Works
painting
Views
Martha Diamond adhered to the artistic traditions of Neo-Expressionism. Diamond relies as much on personal history as she does on direct observation to assemble her paintings, and her style is marked by the way in which she takes liberties with her subject matter. Her pictures skirt the edge of legibility, and while certain works might telegraph the silhouette of a skyline, others dissemble into complex patterns of faceted planes. Ms. Diamond's whole approach to painting is deceptively simple, full of hidden skills and decisions that only gradually reveal themselves, along with a good deal of humor and very little pretension.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Martha Diamond seems to be painting 'the present,' whether it's big or little parts of buildings, specks of dust or paint strokes floating in a raspberry sky...
Connections
- Friend:
- Lois Dodd
- Friend:
- Alex Katz
- Friend:
- Larry Rivers
- Friend:
- Kenneth Koch
- Friend:
- James Schuyler
- Friend:
- Peter Schjeldahl
painter
painter
painter
poet
