Excerpts from the 1998 North Carolina Awards Brochure

Painter and teacher, Marvin Saltzman receives the 1998 North Carolina Award in Fine Arts for his strong, passionate, abstract paintings and the equally strong feelings he inspires in students. For almost forty years he has consistently challenged young artists while he created work that featured intense colors, brisk brushwork, and an inherent tension.

A native of Long Beach, California, Saltzman came from an artistic family. His photographer father created work that predated Pop Art, and his sister Florence inspired his own understanding and interpretation of art. After studying at Chicago’s Art Institute, he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts from the University of Southern California at Los Angeles (1956-59).

Though Saltzman has said this formal education made him question academy methods of teaching, he was driven to share his artistic expression with students in Oregon, California, and Wisconsin. In 1967 he came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught painting, drawing and printmaking. More than just a teacher, however. Saltzman played a key role in building a renovated Department of Art, ultimately serving as its chair. Though administrative work was challenging and his personalized teaching methods continued to attract students, Saltzman decided after twelve years that he needed time to become a painter again. Like many artists before him, he went to Paris and began to create with a passion.

After painting forty-six oil sketches alive with bright and shining hues, he returned to the university recommitted to landscape painting. Saltzman’s priorities now were his students, his department and his work. By 1985 he had begun exhibiting again, demonstrating a new way of visually interpreting nature. By examining landscapes from different perspectives, he often emphasizes perspective and tone over shape. His work now can be found in the National Museum of American Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the University of California-Berkeley, and other collections. He has presented solo exhibits at the Raymond Lopez Gallery in Sierra Madre, California (1962) , St. Andrew’s College (1968), Belanthi Gallery in Brooklyn (1984), the Hanes Art Center in Winston-Salem (1989), the Greenville Museum of Art (1993), Raleigh Contemporary Gallery (1989, 1990, 1996, 1997), and many others.

Listed in Who’s Who in the World, Marvin Saltzman has been a Ford Foundation Tamarind Fellow (1961) and received a fellowship (1979), research grants (1971-1972), and research leave (1991) from the University of North Carolina.

One of North Carolina’s most influential art professors, as well as a profoundly gifted painter, Saltzman has inspired and influenced two generations of students at the University of North Carolina. His provocative critiques are grounded in basic honesty and a desire to make them feel painting from the gut. Students say his vision, direction and support help them capture what they see rather than what they have been programmed to see, making them better artists.

A Chapel Hill resident, Marvin Saltzman has two children. His says his wife Jacquelyn, “…lets me be a painter.”