Fred Thomas Martin (1927-2022) was an American artist, art critic, arts administrator, and educator active in the San Francisco Bay Area between the late 1940s and early 2000s. Primarily known for idiosyncratic approaches to painting informed by Jungian analysis, Martin was a central member of the Beat Generation of artists who began their careers in the artist-run galleries of San Francisco’s North Beach district in the mid 1950s. Martin was a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Art Department, where he studied with regional artists such as Erle Loran and Margaret Peterson. At UC Berkeley, his classmates included Sam Francis and Jay DeFeo, artists with whom he shared common interests and became lifelong friends. Martin’s formative training, however, occurred at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he attended night and summer courses, working closely with Bay Area Figurative painter David Park, his mentor, in addition to Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, who were visiting instructors at the time.
Martin was the Director of Exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1958 and 1965, where he advocated for regional artists by organizing local and national exhibitions. This role allowed him to form tightknit relationships with colleagues such as Richard Diebenkorn, Bruce Conner, Ray DeForest, and Wally Hedrick and curators including Paul Mills and MoMA’s Dorothy Miller. During this time, he also began to write for international art publications, including Art Forum and Art International, becoming one of the few active art critics in the Bay Area to write on regional artists, galleries, and institutions. His tenure as an administrator at SFAI began in 1965 and continued over the years in various roles, including Director of the College and Vice President until 1992. Martin was Dean of Academic Affairs Emeritus until 2016. While working at SFAI, he also taught art and art history classes, working closely with students such as William T. Wiley, Joan Brown, and Mike Henderson as a mentor, advisor, and advocate.
Much of Martin’s artwork is devoted to experimental approaches to depicting the world around him while exploring the impact of the subconscious mind on everyday life. This results in paintings that contain both elements of abstraction and figuration while often engaging experimental mediums like collage, xerox, and spray-paint. Drawing from the austere aesthetic of traditional East Asian art, early on in his development he also incorporated the use of text to direct the viewer, an element that heavily influenced other artists like William T. Wiley. Martin’s paintings, collages, and drawings can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, SF MoMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, Stanford University’s Cantor Center for Visual Arts, and San Jose Museum of Art, among other collections.
