Marina Adams, born 1960 in New Jersey, has developed a dynamic and abstract painterly practice of clear and powerful formal language that centers around exploring the possibilities of form and movement while displaying the structural power of color. Her vibrant works create space and motion by assembling organic, asymmetrical shapes into free-flowing, rhythmic patterns. As the curator Helga Christoffersen put it, Adams’ “work demands silence, enabling us to think and dream and create space”, while embracing gesturalism and improvisation. She reduces the work down to its essentials, allowing space for all the senses. Rather than a purely optical matter, the artist understands painting as the manifestation of intangibles such as temperament, sensibility, intellect, and research. Her work draws inspiration from the natural world, music, textiles, architecture, and literature–Thelonious Monk, Moroccan rugs, Moorish mosaics, and the poet Joanne Kyger–while also engaging in a persistent dialogue with art historical predecessors, such as Henri Matisse, Joan Mitchell, Alma Thomas, Willem de Kooning, and Hilma af Klint.

Marina Adams earned degrees from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and Columbia University, New York, NY. She is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2016) and the Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2018). Adams has participated in various solo and group exhibitions, including the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2023), the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY (2021), Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth (2020), Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2016), and CUE Art Foundation (2008). Marina Adams’ work is in the collections of the MoMA, New York, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai. She lives and works in New York, Bridgehampton, Long Island, and Parma, Italy. 

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