PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE PAT AND PENNY ALLEN
Mary Martin
RHYTHM
LOT SOLD.
50,000 GBP
Details & Cataloguing
Modern & Post-War British Art
|
London
London
Mary Martin
1907-1969
RHYTHM
signed and dated '65. on the reverse
Formica, wood, painted wood and stainless steel
71 by 71cm.; 28 by 28in.
Executed 1965.
Read Condition Report
Read Condition Report
Formica, wood, painted wood and stainless steel
71 by 71cm.; 28 by 28in.
Executed 1965.
Provenance
Acquired by the late owners by the 1980s
Exhibited
London, Tate, British Sculpture in the 60s, February - April 1965 (probably);
Northampton, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Women in the Arts, 1965 (probably, details untraced).
Northampton, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Women in the Arts, 1965 (probably, details untraced).
Catalogue Note
We are grateful to Dr Susan Tebby and the Estate of Mary Martin for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.
Mary Martin did not make her first abstract work until 1950 but from that date onwards, the sole focus of her work was constructed abstract reliefs, culminating in her most significant commission, Wall Construction for University of Stirling, installed in November 1969, shortly after her premature death. Along with her husband Kenneth Martin, Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill amongst others, Mary Martin was at the vanguard of the British Constructivist movement. In 1956 Mary and Kenneth collaborated with John Weeks to construct the ninth ‘environment’ for the seminal Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition, This is Tomorrow, with architectonic white relief panels surrounding a mobile by Kenneth. Though often seen in opposition to the Independent Group, which included Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, it is more, perhaps, a case of intersecting interests explored through differing means. Issues of science and nature, the social role of the artist or the artist shaped by society, mass-production and the copy, the machine and the man-made are all at the heart of Martin’s constructivism. Whilst Hamilton and Paolozzi might have employed copious detritus in their art, Martin’s has a simplicity that belies the formal and social complexity in her work: ‘The end is always to achieve simplicity but the means and processes are often complex because one is not repeating a performance of something which has gone before. Each work is a fresh exploration…but sometimes it is something that has waited to be expressed for a long time.’ (Mary Martin, The End is Always to Achieve Simplicity, 1957, unpublished and dated manuscript, quoted in Mary Martin, exh. cat., Tate, London, 3rd October – 25th November 1984, p.28). Martin aimed not to reproduce nature but to replicate the systems of nature, using logic, mathematics, geometry and proportion, informed by intuition, and employing industrial ‘non-art’ material but working by hand and largely unassisted.
Mary Martin did not make her first abstract work until 1950 but from that date onwards, the sole focus of her work was constructed abstract reliefs, culminating in her most significant commission, Wall Construction for University of Stirling, installed in November 1969, shortly after her premature death. Along with her husband Kenneth Martin, Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill amongst others, Mary Martin was at the vanguard of the British Constructivist movement. In 1956 Mary and Kenneth collaborated with John Weeks to construct the ninth ‘environment’ for the seminal Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition, This is Tomorrow, with architectonic white relief panels surrounding a mobile by Kenneth. Though often seen in opposition to the Independent Group, which included Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, it is more, perhaps, a case of intersecting interests explored through differing means. Issues of science and nature, the social role of the artist or the artist shaped by society, mass-production and the copy, the machine and the man-made are all at the heart of Martin’s constructivism. Whilst Hamilton and Paolozzi might have employed copious detritus in their art, Martin’s has a simplicity that belies the formal and social complexity in her work: ‘The end is always to achieve simplicity but the means and processes are often complex because one is not repeating a performance of something which has gone before. Each work is a fresh exploration…but sometimes it is something that has waited to be expressed for a long time.’ (Mary Martin, The End is Always to Achieve Simplicity, 1957, unpublished and dated manuscript, quoted in Mary Martin, exh. cat., Tate, London, 3rd October – 25th November 1984, p.28). Martin aimed not to reproduce nature but to replicate the systems of nature, using logic, mathematics, geometry and proportion, informed by intuition, and employing industrial ‘non-art’ material but working by hand and largely unassisted.
The present work, Rhythm, created in 1964-65, signifies an important phase in Martin’s constructed reliefs. With these ‘Rhythm’ works, a cube sliced diagonally became the unit of choice, with the ‘sliced’ underside mirrored and the half cubes then arranged in a sequence that allowed both repetition and variation, a ‘rhythm’ of form. In these works, what Martin terms the ‘tilt’ was of fundamental importance in introducing shadow and colour: ‘The vitality of the tilt had some connection with the ability to move and change on the part of an element which was virtually uncommitted. A new and fifth element had come into play; namely the shadow. What interested me here was not so much the shape of the cast shadow, which is obvious, but the colour varying with the angle of the tilt so that shadow and substance played with each other’ (Mary Martin, ‘Character of the Oblique’, 1969, published in The Structurist, quoted in op. cit., p.28). Whilst later variants, such as Compound Rhythms with Blue, 1966, Arts Council Collection, include touches of colour, Rhythm is pure white, wood and mirror. This restraint imbues the work with a certain purity but also emphasises the centrality of the environment and the playfulness of the work’s relation to its surroundings. The mirrors reflect both the work and the environment, introducing layers of light and colour, and re-presenting the surroundings and even the viewer within the work itself. Profoundly interested in the relationship between art and architecture and the recipient of numerous commissions by architects, Martin sought to bring her work into the real world and the introduction of mirrors enabled such an integration. This ludic interaction of light and colour further established the primacy of movement: ‘The expressive content has been concerned with movement and change, being geometrically and mathematically based…With a maximum of movement of elements within the work, actual movement has seemed unnecessary and stillness essential.’ (Mary Martin, ‘Reflections’, 1967, quoted in op. cit., p.33). Due to time-consuming commissions, her intensive methods and early death, Martin’s body of work is small: Rhythm is one of very few reliefs of such scale and quality in private collections, and ranks amongst the best of British Constructivism, sophisticated in simplicity and playful in ever-changing light, shadow and colour.
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