Irving Marcus (1929–2021) was a painter, educator and important figure in Northern California’s postwar art community. Born in Minneapolis, Marcus earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1950 and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1952. He taught at Sacramento State from 1959 until 1991, becoming a key link among artists working in Sacramento, Davis, San Francisco and Chicago. Beginning in the 1960s, Marcus drew imagery from newspapers and other mass-media sources, recombining figures into disorienting compositions. His approach shares affinities with Pop art, Fauvism and the Chicago Imagists while remaining highly individual. He was closely associated with Adeliza McHugh’s influential Candy Store Gallery in Folsom and with an extended community that included Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud, Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. In 2018, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art presented Irving Marcus: Romance & Disaster, A Retrospective, the first comprehensive museum survey of his career, bringing together more than four decades of paintings and works on paper. His work is held by institutions including the de Young Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Yale University Art Gallery.