Solo Exhibition: Donald Martiny | Divine Material, Curated by Alain Chivilò

The strength of an artist is to create with originality starting from cultural education in the art history. Donald Martiny, as incipit, was inspired by his colleague Barnett Newman, refining a greater analytical propensity, apt to search all that is transcendental.

In the concept aimed at chasing the beyond, in what we know and see, bases are determined to shape creativity in unexplored compositions.

If for Newman to conceive implies managing chaos within image-essence, art consequently must tend to the discovery of "new forms and symbols having the living quality of creation".

Donald Martiny born in the County of New York State in an area of artistic fervor starting from Abstract Expressionism, interprets, although belonging to successive generations, an inner revolution through incisive gestures.

Living in the Big Apple air, a city that was able to unite history and experimentation in a cultural and artistic context, allowed Martiny to design by combining form and colors. From these pictorial elements there is a historiography within a contemporary vitality.

Consequently, for the artist, the creation takes place in an action along a compositional interpretation governed by immediacy and hidden programming, as for example Gutai Group and Action Painting.

Donald Martiny does not linger on the result obtained in the instant and in the will, but investigates how space and forms can play with each other in illusory relationships. To this end, in his works, multiple plans are determined among light, environment and movement thanks to a skillful combination of pictorial overlaps.


“The present painter is concerned not with his own feelings or with the mystery of his own personality, but with the penetration into the world-mystery. His imagination is therefore attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets.” - Barnett Newman


Every artistic composition comes from a previous project that, from the color theory, generates nuances for intelligent tonal mixtures connoting a Martiny style.

The artistic act starts from a reasoning that, in the different intensities, is realized through a calibrated use of brushes, hands and other tool useful to cause visually gentle scratches. Physical movement is a creative act for a sinuous and enveloping shape in an effective rhythm always in harmony with the generating force. Therefore, the gesture is in the colors while the external light creates, naturally or artificially, energies that put the work in connection with the hosting space.

Where the not form seem to contradict itself, denying it, Donald Martiny allows it to be reborn, generating sensory, dynamic and interactive relationships, obtaining positive emotions. Tactile values are naturally formed between the volumes and the plastic effects towards the observer, for relationships of pure emotion.

The different nuances thus directly influence the soul as indicated by Wassily Kandinsky, but also allow them to be stretched in their static movement, for a vibration of clear musical freedom. Martiny's works always live within a materiality ruled by gradations rich in poetry for simply dreamlike architectural contexts.

In his self-discovery action, reference to Jackson Pollock, through an apparent non-violent sign shapes asymmetrical commas, which in their visual interaction, multi-dimensional and physical, echo lyrical abstractions of expressive painting always linked to the surrounding environment. Martiny conceives pictorial creations that, in an apparent simplicity, deepen intellectually the human essence.

Paraphrasing a thought of the writer George Bernard Shaw, it is evident that the pictorial-sculptural action of Martiny, in his personal elaboration, starts from afar because he believes "in Michelangelo, Velásquez and Rembrandt, in the painter of drawing, in the mystery of color": in that sometimes symbiotic, sometimes mutualistic relationship that links elements of art history to contemporary forms and symbols.

Donald Martiny reveals metaphysical enigmas, recalling how originality combined with interpretation generate new complexities, but above all allow a multidimensional interaction between time, tactile sensation, visual perception, spatiality, colors, matter and light.


Donald Martiny, Divine Material
Solo Exhibition Curated by Alain Chivilò

Casa Del Mantegna, Mantova, Italy
July 20 - August 25, 2019