Marina was largely self-taught as a painter and belonged to no school of art or academic institution.  He was in every sense of

the word an independent thinker, an outsider who forged an original style and meaning from his personal existence and the

circumstances of a life lived in exile.  Beginning in the early nineteen-sixties, he created colorful iconic figures of saints and

angels, which he began to blend with images and symbols of Basque life, such as berets, wine, bread and fish.  These started as

the flat one-dimensional paintings of the Estaciones del Vía Çrucis and developed into the multi-dimensional oneiric work of

the nineteen-eighties, such as that in, Este es mi país and the series of La merienda.  In 1966, Marina was horrified by the

accidental dropping of several hydrogen bombs by the United States on land near the small fishing village of Palomares in the

Almería region of Spain.  He created the Palomares series, a collection of paintings and drawings filled with scatological

imagery, distorted bodies and poisoned tomato crops produced by the radioactive plutonium released by the explosions.  In

one of the last entries to his diary, he wrote, "Dentro de poco tendré 74 años y jamás volveré a mi querido País Vasco; por eso mis

pinturas, como un espejismo gigante son memorias de mi querido país."