George Marinko (American 1908-1989)

George Marinko was known as the "purest" of all the groundbreaking American Surrealists.  He created "automatic" drawings as precursors to his oil paintings, and it was from these obscure oils that he began to create his own complex iconography. 

After participating in the revolutionary Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism show in 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Marinko avoided the limelight by slipping back into his less chaotic life in Connecticut and began painting more stylized regionalist landscapes.

He exhibited extensively early in his career at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.