Ed Beem reviews two concurrent painting exhibitions at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine: Maine Moderns: Art in Sequinland, 1900-1940 on view through September 11 and John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury on view through October 10.

Maine Moderns: Art in Sequinland highlights the importance of Maine in the development of American Modernism. Beem notes that the "Modernists who passed through Seguinland include Max Weber, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Gaston Lachaise, and perhaps most importantly for the history of Maine art, Marguerite and William Zorach."

The Marin exhibition "focus[es] on his late work, paintings in which he translated the dynamic natural forces of Maine's bold coast into increasingly abstract compositions inspired by wind and water, waves, and sunlight."