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Ezio Martinelli at Robert Henry Adams
Art in America, Dec, 2005 by Victor M. Cassidy
Ezio Martinelli (1913-1980), an almost completely forgotten gestural artist of the New York School, dealt with conflict, struggle and the horrible in his work, which makes it painfully relevant to our time. His monumental drawings of the early '50s are filled with restless, writhing forms, twisted body parts and insect-like monsters that fight to the death. Nuclear warfare seemed quite possible when he made the drawings and World War II was a recent memory. Though his work bespeaks anxiety and foreboding, Martinelli is too serious to wallow in melodrama.
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Martinelli started out in the 1940s exhibiting Cubist and Expressionist paintings in group shows at ACA Gallery and Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century, and later at Willard Gallery. From 1947 to 1975, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, where his closest colleagues were sculptors Theodore Roszak and David Smith. Martinelli quit painting in 1953 to make large-scale drawings for a few years, then became a sculptor whose best-known commission is a 30-foot-tall work in aluminum at the United Nations General Assembly building.
On view in this recent show were nine untitled ink drawings on paper that range in size from 31 by 49 to 62 by 74 inches. Roughly speaking, his imagery is either sculptural or gestural. The sculptural drawings show semi-abstract forms with elements that suggest rib cages seen from the inside, muscles, buttocks, breasts, leaves, flowers and more that reveal Martinelli's understanding of the structures of nature.
The most rewarding of the gestural drawings have a baroque feel, with a delicate brushed-ink background, bravura draftsmanship and natural forms such as clouds, hair and sea creatures. To build up these images, Martinelli apparently rendered the basic architecture in heavy lines, imparted dimensionality with brushed ink and lighter lines, and then added curlicued and curved accents. The result is a complex, suspended form composed of many tiny details.
In Untitled (Aqua), 1956, the most powerful piece in the show, two fighting monsters explode from a waterspout in the ocean, recalling photographs of atomic bomb tests. The water roils around the combatants, and the sky is filled with clouds and tiny lines that intensify the sense of cataclysm. In this gorgeous tour de force of ink draftsmanship, Martinelli may be warning us away from the seductions of war.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
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