Abstraction: four fish from Block Prints 1957

John Murray Barton

Block Prints 1957 is a loose-leaf portfolio of eight color block prints created in 1957 by John Murray Barton. The individual color prints are each pencil signed, dated, and editioned 40/250 and the portfolio title page is annotated “Portfolio # 40.“ Despite having a high edition number, it is very unlikely that 250 portfolios were published. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was gifted Portfolio # 49 but from what can be gleaned from their information it appears the artist interchanged his block prints. A portfolio sold at auction held four or five of the same color block prints as in Portfolio # 40 but the rest were different. These impressions are printed on beautiful sheets of Imperial Japan paper.

John Murray Barton was born on 8 February 1921 in New York City. He studied in New York City at the Art Students League under George Bridgman, Frank Vincent DuMond, and Gustav William Von Schlegell, and also at the Nahum Tschacbasov School.

Barton incorporated sand and other materials into his oil paintings and murals and he sculpted with copper wire. He worked on two mural projects with noted ceramic muralist, Lumin Martin Winter. The first was a ceramic mural and the second was a sand and oil mural; both were public art commissions via the New York Board of Education. Barton also created small scale paintings and blocks prints and solo exhibitions of his work were mounted at the Mack Gallery in Philadelphia in 1957, the Fantasy Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1958 and 1960, and the Hudson Guild in New York in 1959.

Barton was a member of the Woodstock Art Association and the International Association of Artists. He taught private studio classes in creative expression and lectured on techniques and creative expression at university art departments on the East Coast between 1960 and 1965.

John Murray Barton died on 17 December 2000 in New York City.