Eugene J. Martin

Eugene James Martin (b. Washington, D.C., July 24, 1938 – d. Lafayette, Louisiana, January 1, 2005) was a prolific African American painter. Martin’s art is best known for his personal, often gently humorous works that may incorporate whimsical allusions to animal, machine and structural imagery among areas of pure or constructed lyrical abstraction. He did not belong to any school or art movement, remaining an individualist throughout his life. After attending the Corcoran School of Art from 1960-1963, he became a professional fine arts painter, considering artistic integrity his only guide. He briefly lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from 1990-1994, returned to Washington DC, and in 1996 moved to Lafayette, Louisiana with his wife, a biologist, whom he married in 1988. His works of art can be found in numerous private art collections throughout the world, and are included in the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana; the Stowitts Museum & Library in Pacific Grove, CA; the Munich Museum of Modern Art; the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; the Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art in Savannah, Georgia, and the Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art at the University of Delaware.