Title
Preview
Accession Number
1992.6
Creation Date
1950
Description
Consequential Referendum, lithograph, 1992.6 (above)
Flower Children 1, lithograph, 1992.5.1 (additional attachment)
Flower Children 2, lithograph, 1992.5.2 (additional attachment)
John Stockton De Martelly (1903-1979) was an internationally known lithographer, painter and illustrator, who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, the Accademia di Belle ArtI in Florence and the Royal College of Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum School in London. In the 1930-1940's, he taught printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute as the Head of the Graphic Arts Department and became friends with the American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. His early works were inspired by Thomas Hart Benton and they shared an interest in the depiction of the rural American landscape. When Thomas Hart Benton was fired at the Institute, John De Martelly was offered his position as the head of the painting department, however he refused and severed his association with the school. He then left for New Hampshire to concentrate on producing lithographs for the Associated American Artists Galleries, Inc in New York. By the late 1940's he abandoned the regionalist style for abstract art and was acknowledged as an expert lithographer and teacher of the medium. The three pieces illustrated in the Kettering University Collection are examples from his later period, which he described in his writings as influenced by cubism, surrealism, and expressionism. In 1943, he was asked to join Michigan State University as a Professor of Art and later Artist-In-Residence, a position he held for twenty-six years. A retrospective of his work was held at the university in 1970 honoring his teaching and art career. He also was a Consultant Director in printmaking at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for over seventeen years and a juror and exhibitor at the General Motors Styling Center in Warren, Michigan, The Flint Institute of Arts, the Detroit Artists Market and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He also published work in Time and Life magazines, created advertising work, as well as created illustrations in fine art books. His work is held in numerous museums throughout the United States.
