Knox Martin, Pulitzer Prize Winner Norman Mailer Portrait Etching Line Drawing, c.1975

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Signed. Numbered line etching
Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, … Read more Signed. Numbered line etching
Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and liberal political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in fact-based journalism. Mailer was also known for his essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro".

Martin (born February 12, 1923) is an American painter, sculptor and muralist.
Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 till 1950. He is one of the leading members of the New York School of artists and writers. He lives and works in New York City.
Notable work Venus (1970), Woman with bicycle (1979)
Awards Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, NEA Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal (Artists' Fellowship, Inc.), Mary & Maxwell Desser Memorial Award (National Academy of Design), J. Sanford Saltus Medal for Painting (National Academy of Design), Kept Memorial Prize (National Academy of Design), Desser Award for Painting (National Academy of Design), C.A.P.S. Grant, Longview Fellowships

Knox Martin is the oldest son of Lieutenant William Knox Martin, a Virginia-born early aviation pioneer and flyer, and his wife Isabel Vieco, who were married in the Canal Zone in Panama in 1921. Knox Martin Sr., painter, poet, early test pilot, was the first man to fly over the Andes mountains. Six years after his marriage, Martin Sr. was fatally injured in an automobile accident in Watertown, New York.
His widow Isabel relocated with her three young sons from Salem, Virginia to New York City.
After serving in the United States Coast Guard during World War II, Knox Martin attended the Art Students League of New York on the G.I. Bill from 1946 to 1950, where he studied with Harry Sternberg, Vaclav Vytlacil, Will Barnet, and Morris Kantor. In 1955, Willem de Kooning sent Meyer Schapiro to Knox Martin's studio to see Concert in the Park. He was a close personal friend of Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline.
In 1954, Martin's friend Franz Kline placed a painting of his in the Stable Gallery Annual. Charles Egan of the Charles Egan Gallery saw Martin's painting at the Stable Gallery and asked him to show his work in a one-man show for the tenth anniversary of the Egan Gallery.
Knox Martin is best known for his repertory of signs and symbols that allude to nature and, in particular, to the female form. Flatly and freely painted in brilliant colors, his works have often been executed on a grand scale, as in the outdoor wall painting, Woman with bicycle, at West Houston and MacDougal Streets in Manhattan. Bearing elements of Pop Art and elements of Abstract Expressionism, He mostly creates painting, sculpture and wall paintings using media such as acrylic, collage, fresco, ink drawing (pen and ink), mixed media/multimedia, and oil paint.
One of his wall paintings in New York City is the twelve-story mural Venus. Painted in 1970, it is located on the south side of Bayview Correctional Facility at 19th Street and the West Side Highway.

SELECT COLLECTIONS
Whitney Museum of American Art,
Museum of Modern Art,
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, (Smithsonian)
Art Students League of New York,
Brooklyn Museum of Art,
National Academy of Design,
National Arts Club,
New York University,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Art Institute of Chicago,
Art Museum of Southeast Texas,
Berkeley Art Museum,
Boca Raton Museum of Art,
Chrysler Museum of Art,
Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Dallas Museum of Art,
Denver Art Museum,
Heckscher Museum of Art,
Provincetown Art Association and Museum,
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
Israel Museum,
Ludwig Museum in Budapest,
Bibliothèque Nationale. Paris, France

In 2002 Martin was named to the National Academy of Design.
On November 14, 2016, France conferred the insignia of the Legion of Honour on Martin for his contribution to the liberation of France during World War II.
Knox Martin gives master classes at the Art Students League of New York. He taught at Yale Graduate School of Art, first as visiting critic in art, invited by Jack Tworkov, and then as Professor of Art. He has also taught at New York University, the University of Minnesota, and the International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy. See less