Maria Martins (Campanha MG 1894¹ - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1973)
Sculptor, draftswoman, printmaker and writer.
Maria de Lourdes Martins Pereira de Souza developed much of her career abroad because of the work of her husband, the ambassador Carlos Martins. She took up sculpture in 1926 and furthered her training in Belgium with the sculptor Oscar Jespers (1887 - 1970) in 1936. In 1939, she moved with Carlos Martins to Washington D.C. Later, she rented an apartment in New York, where she studied sculpture with Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973) and made works in bronze. In 1941, she held her first solo exhibition at the Corcoran Art Gallery, in Washington D.C. She met André Breton (1896 - 1966), who introduced her to European artists associated with Surrealism and Dadaism, such as Michel Tapié (1909 - 1987), André Masson (1896 - 1987), Yves Tanguy (1900 - 1955), Max Ernst (1891 - 1976) and Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968). In 1947, André Breton wrote the preface to the catalog of her solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, in New York. In 1948, she moved to Paris, where her studio became a meeting place for intellectuals and artists. She returned to Brazil for good in 1950. She helped organize the first Bienais Internacionais de São Paulo and found the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ. As a writer, she had a column in the newspaper Correio da Manhã and published, among other books, A Índia e o Mundo Novo [India and the New World], A Ásia Maior [Greater Asia] and O Planeta China [Planet China].
Critical Commentary
With her highly individual poetics, Maria Martins stands out as a singular figure in the history of Brazilian modern art. Owing to her marriage to the ambassador Carlos Martins in 1926, she spends most of her adult life abroad. She studies music and painting in her youth and begins to devote herself entirely to sculpture in Belgium in 1936, under the guidance of Oscar Jespers. She moves to Washington D.C. in 1939 and stays in the United States until 1948. It is there that she produces most of her artistic work and gains recognition from the avant-garde circles of the time.
Over the years, Maria Martins becomes known as one of the leading sculptors associated with the Surrealist movement. In her first exhibition, however, in 1941 at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington D.C., she shows realist figurative sculptures with subjects drawn from Brazilian culture or religious themes, in a variety of materials (plaster, wood, terracotta and bronze). That same year she sets up a studio in New York, where she studies with Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973) and Stanley William Hayter (1901 - 1988). At that time the city is experiencing an artistic ferment owing to the emigration of many European artists who settle there to escape the Second World War (1939-1945). This experience probably leads the artist to absorb new content, incorporating Surrealist elements.
The change becomes visible in her second solo exhibition, in 1942, at the Valentine Gallery in New York, where she shows dreamlike, Surrealist-inspired forms cast in bronze. Through this show she meets leading figures of Surrealism such as the critic and writer André Breton (1896 - 1966) and the artists André Masson (1896 - 1987), Yves Tanguy (1900 - 1955), Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968),2 Max Ernst (1891 - 1976) and Michel Tapié (1909 - 1987). Her second exhibition at the New York gallery, Amazonia, in 1943, is a true success.3 The artist continues to work with themes drawn from Brazilian myths and traditions, and nature now comes to symbolize the power of the wild and of desire, as opposed to the tamed nature of Western civilization. In bronze, Maria Martins creates organic forms increasingly free of any realist figuration, using suggestive titles, as is typical of other Surrealist artists. Notable works from this period include Não Te Esqueças Nunca que Eu Venho dos Trópicos [Never Forget That I Come from the Tropics] (1942), Cobra Grande [Great Snake] (1943) and Sem Eco [Without Echo] (1943).
The emphasis on the force of the wild and of desire enchants Breton, who writes in a 1947 text: "Maria, and behind her - that is, within her - marvelous Brazil, where over the vastest spaces ... the wing of the unrevealed still hovers. The immense door only half-open onto the virgin regions where the untouched, utterly new forces of the future lie hidden. (...) The anguish, the temptations, the turmoil, but also the dawns, the joys and even, now and then, the pure delights - this is what Maria, in bronzes such as Yaci, Bouina and Yemanjá, has been able to capture like no one else at its primitive source. (...) She owes nothing to the sculpture of the past or the present".4 From this period on, Maria Martins takes part in major Surrealist exhibitions, such as the one organized in Paris in 1947 by the French writer.
In Maria Martins, the evocation of a nature untamed by technique combines with elements of the unconscious to create images of strong visual impact, charged with eroticism and violence, but also with a certain gentleness and lyricism. In the work Impossível [Impossible] (1944), which exists in several bronze versions, one of them acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York - MoMA in 1946, hybrid beings (a man and a woman resembling ancestral animals) are placed face to face, suggesting a situation of deep desire, but also of aggression and death, as if pointing to the limits of full union between beings.5 In this sense, certain animals such as the snake and the spider leave the mythological universe of Amazonian legends to embody symbols related to the artist's own experience. In However (1944), the serpent of desire squeezes the woman's body, imprisoning it. In A Mulher Perdeu Sua Sombra [The Woman Lost Her Shadow] (1946), two serpents emerge from the head of a rigid female body, probably a reference to libidinous thoughts.
In 1948 she moves to Paris and becomes friends with Constantin Brancusi (1876 - 1957), Benjamin Péret (1899 - 1959), Amédée Ozenfant (1886 - 1966) and Michel Seuphor (1901 - 1999).6 In 1950 she returns to Brazil for good. She helps organize the 1st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, in which she takes part as a guest artist. Her Surrealist poetics, however, would not be well received in the Brazilian art world of the first half of the 1950s, dominated by the concerns of Constructivism and abstract art. This leads to the artist's marginal position in relation to the dominant account of Brazilian modern art.
Her last solo exhibition takes place in 1956 at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ, an institution she helped found. Judging from the exhibition catalog, it already takes place in a climate of hostility, since Maria Martins publishes a text defending the artist's freedom of expression.7 Nevertheless, important critics such as Mário Pedrosa (1900 - 1981) and Murilo Mendes (1901 - 1975) write about her work. Interestingly, both critics point to the challenge of combining the Surrealist technique of "psychic automatism" with work in bronze. The sculptures made in this period also become more abstract, without losing the allusive meaning of their titles (for example O Canto do Mar [The Song of the Sea], 1952, and A Soma dos Nossos Dias [The Sum of Our Days], 1954/1955).
Notes
1 In several sources the year of birth is given as 1900.
2 The artist has an intense love affair with the French artist. See: CANTON, Kátia. Maria Martins: a mulher perdeu sua sombra. In: BIENAL INTERNACIONAL DE SÃO PAULO, 24., 1998, São Paulo, SP. Núcleo histórico: antropofagia e histórias de canibalismos. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1998. p. 288.
3 On that occasion, Maria Martins shared the gallery space with her friend Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). While the Brazilian artist managed to sell almost all her works, Mondrian's exhibition of the New York series was a failure. At the end of the show, Maria Martins decided to buy from her friend the canvas Broadway Boogie-Woogie, which she donated to MoMA in New York.
4 The text Maria was written for the catalog of the artist's exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York (1947) and later republished in Breton's book Le Surréalisme et la Peinture.
5 About the work, the artist said: "The world is complicated and sad; it is almost impossible for people to understand one another".
6 Seuphor, in his Dictionnaire de la Sculpture Moderne, presents Maria Martins as the great sculptor of Surrealism.
7 This catalog also includes texts by André Breton, Benjamin Péret and Murilo Mendes. Quotations from Marcel Duchamp and Rainer Maria Rilke address the artist's freedom and his hostile relationship with criticism.
Critiques
"The sculptures Maria is currently showing in New York reveal an even greater concern with stripping down and place her squarely at the antipodes of an art which - alongside Brancusi, Arp and Giacometti - has not ceased for thirty years to dry out intellectualism. In Hasard Hagard, Sur Doute, the farewell to the anecdotal is such that it could in no way be interpreted as a change of direction on her part. Rather (and this is what matters), Maria's démarche has led her from the macrocosm to the microcosm, instead of making her travel the opposite path, which, as we know, holds only ambushes and lures. It is, it can never be repeated enough, the universe that must be questioned first, starting from man, and not man starting from the universe. What heralds Maria's great acrobatic chords, the tour de force of this total malleability within the rigid, is not the 'lost wax', IT IS THE SAPS".
André Breton
BRETON, André. Maria Martins. A Phala - Revista do Movimento Surrealista. v. 1, p. 112-113.
"The organic expansions and contractions of Maria Martins's sculpture - she was, in fact, the only one to have had ties to the Surrealist movement - point to another area of interest in the fantastic. Above all, one must recognize the obstinacy of this work marked by excess, by the uncontrollable profusion of a discursive figuration, in a context - that of Brazil in the 1950s - that strives to impose a visuality governed by abstract, rational and generalizing principles meant to account for the original disorder of Brazilian reality.
Maria's work does the opposite: it naively expresses this disorder in two kinds of figuration. The first presents itself as the mythical unconscious of the Brazilian soul itself, arising from the tortuous effort to materialize a generous and exuberant nature that is at the same time uncultivated and untamable. The series of works the artist devoted to the Amazon is significant here. The second bursts forth as the unleashing of the psychological unconscious, shamelessly given over to the almost rhetorical transcription of its images. In both, there is the belief that the overflowing unconscious can be materialized immediately, a primordial nature that will settle as an unfathomable viscosity in an ordered and controlled world. Because of this lack of restraint, this near inelegance, Mário Pedrosa pointed out the absence of monumentality in her sculpture. It aspires to something great and majestic, but is torn apart by the impossibility of the very grandeur of its discourse. It therefore lives on this threshold, always a step beyond or short of sculpture: it lives in this doubt, ceaselessly wishing to display a power that would surpass it to infinity".
Sônia Salzstein e Ivo Mesquita
SALZSTEIN, Sônia; MESQUITA, Ivo. Imaginários singulares. In: IMAGINÁRIOS singulares. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1987. p. 18.
"The volumes in her sculpture, in bronze, polished metal or wood, have no consistency, articulation or hierarchy of planes. They tend to become equal to one another, treated as if they were merely a dripping or porous surface. (...) In later phases, the massive volumes empty out, gaps open in them and the surrounding space tends to penetrate them. This is when the sculptor best fulfills herself. She then gives us a weave of branches, lianas and trunks in which the sensuality of the chosen material - porous, greenish, with the consistency of rotten wood - expresses her tortured spirit with fewer sentimental outpourings and more plastically".
Mário Pedrosa
PEDROSA, Mário. Maria a escultora. In: BIENAL BRASIL SÉCULO XX. Catálogo. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 1994. p. 145-146.
Testimonials
"It matters little which form of expression is used, as long as the artist conveys a message that is his own, in his own language, and does not resort to that kind of 'fashion' that is often responsible for the great poverty of artists of real worth. To explain myself better, I would say that, for me, when a painting or sculpture immediately reveals the school or movement its author wishes to join, without that sculpture or painting arousing any greater admiration or even repulsion, that work is nothing more than 'fashion' and will die, even if it enjoys momentary success".
Maria Martins
MARTINS, Maria. Maria. Rio de Janeiro: MAM, 1956.
Solo Exhibitions
1941 - Washington (United States) - Solo, at Corcoran Art Gallery
1942 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Valentine Gallery
1943 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Valentine Gallery
1944 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Valentine Gallery
1946 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Valentine Gallery
1947 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Julien Levy Gallery
1947 - New York (United States) - Maria: Recent Sculptures, at Julien Levy Gallery
1949 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galerie René Drouin
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at ABI/RJ
1950 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at MAM/SP
1956 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Maria, at MAM/RJ
Group Exhibitions
1940 - Philadelphia (United States) - Group show, at International Philadelphia
1941 - New York (United States) - 3rd Latin America Exhibition of Fine Arts
1942 - New York (United States) - Hommage Fait à Rodin, at Buchholz Gallery
1942 - New York (United States) - Maria Martins, at Valentine Gallery
1943 - New York (United States) - Maria Martins, at Valentine Gallery
1944 - Ohio (United States) - Religious Art of Today, at Dayton Ohio
1946 - Saint Louis (United States) - Origins of Modern Sculpture, at City Art of St. Louis
1947 - Paris (France) - Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, at Galerie Maeght
1949 - Paris (France) - De Rodin à Nos Jours, at Maison de la Culture Française
1949 - Salzburg (Austria) - Music and the Visual Arts
1951 - São Paulo SP - 1st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão do Trianon - guest artist
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at MAM/SP - 2nd prize in sculpture
1954 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art: Exhibition of the Collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, at MAM/SP
1955 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at MAM/SP - best national sculptor prize
1959 - Leverkusen (Germany) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1959 - Munich (Germany) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe, at Kunsthaus
1959 - Vienna (Austria) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1960 - Hamburg (Germany) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1960 - Lisbon (Portugal) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1960 - Madrid (Spain) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1960 - Paris (France) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1960 - Utrecht (Netherlands) - First Group Exhibition of Brazilian Artists in Europe
1967 - São Paulo SP - 1st Surrealist Exhibition, at Teatro Itália
Posthumous Exhibitions
1973 - São Paulo SP - 12th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Sculpture in Urban Space: 50 Years
1979 - São Paulo SP - 15th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1982 - São Paulo SP - A Century of Sculpture in Brazil, at Masp
1984 - Petrópolis RJ - Solo, at Palácio de Cristal
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Belo Horizonte MG - Rio: Constructive Strand, at MAP
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio: Surrealist Strand, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1985 - São Paulo SP - The Art of the Imaginary, at Galeria Encontro das Artes
1985 - São Paulo SP - Rio: Constructive Strand, at MAC/USP
1987 - São Paulo SP - 19th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo - Singular Imaginaries Room, at Fundação Bienal
1987 - São Paulo SP - The Biennials in the MAC Collection: 1951 to 1985, at MAC/USP
1987 - Paris (France) - Modernity: 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1988 - New York (United States) - The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States: 1920-1970, at The Bronx Museum of the Arts
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Highlights of the Initial Collection, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - Modernity: 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - El Paso (United States) - The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States: 1920-1970, at El Paso Museum of Art
1989 - San Diego (United States) - The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States: 1920-1970, at San Diego Museum of Art
1989 - San Juan (Puerto Rico) - The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States: 1920-1970, at Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
1990 - Miami (United States) - The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States: 1920-1970, at Center for the Fine Arts Miami Art Museum of Dade
1992 - Poços de Caldas MG - Brazilian Modern Art: Collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, at Casa da Cultura de Poços de Caldas
1992 - São Paulo SP - The Seduction of Volumes: Three-Dimensional Works of the MAC, at MAC/USP
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil 100 Years of Modern Art, at MNBA
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Modern Art: A Selection from the Roberto Marinho Collection, at Masp
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art: 50 Years of History in the MAC/USP Collection: 1920-1970, at MAC/USP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Women Artists in the MAC Collection, at MAC/USP
1997 - Florianópolis SC - 5th Victor Meirelles National Salon, at Masc
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Maria Martins: Retrospective, at Galeria Jean Boghici
1997 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: Profile of an Identity, at Espaço Cultural Safra
1997 - São Paulo SP - Maria Martins, at Fundação Maria Luisa e Oscar Americano
1997 - São Paulo SP - The Mystery of Forms, at MAC/USP
1997 - São Paulo SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
1997 - Washington D. C. (United States) - Brazilian Sculpture: Profile of an Identity, at Centro Cultural do BID
1998 - New York (United States) - The Surrealist Sculpture of Maria Martins, at André Emmerich Gallery
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Constantini Collection at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, at MAM/RJ
1998 - São Paulo SP - 24th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Constantini Collection at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, at MAM/SP
1999 - Lima (Peru) - Brazil 500 Years Exhibition, at Museu Pedro de Osma
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Maria Martins: Les sculptures surréalistes des années 40, at Galeria Jean Boghici
2000 - Brasília DF - Brazil Europe Exhibition: Encounters in the 20th Century, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 20th Century: Art of Brazil, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition. Modern Art, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: From the Pinacoteca to the Jardim da Luz, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - New York (United States) - Brazil: Body and Soul, at Guggenheim Museum
2001 - New York (United States) - Brazil: Body and Soul, at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Surrealism, at CCBB
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2002 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - Brasília DF - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Century of a Brazilian: Roberto Marinho Collection, at Paço Imperial
2004 - São Paulo SP - The Price of Seduction: From Corset to Silicone, at Itaú Cultural
2005 - São Paulo SP - The Body in Brazilian Contemporary Art, at Itaú Cultural
2005 - São Paulo SP - The Century of a Brazilian: Roberto Marinho Collection, at MAM/SP
Source: Itaú Cultural
