Renowned American sculptor, John Martini lives in Key West, Florida, for most of the year. He lives on an island in South Florida where he lives in a singular house full of extravagant liabilities: an old movie theater, a witch doctor's house, a prostitute's house and, for a brief moment, Martin Luther King's church.
Read MoreFor the past few years, he has been spending the summer in France, escaping the dizzying heat of his island. He has settled in an old blacksmith's house from the 18th century where he has recreated a fantastic universe where his own works and a very old French art of living meet.
He literally draws in metal and gives birth to sculptures made of large beams or plates, coming from the demolition of industrial buildings, cut with a blowtorch, often painted and coloured. His works take the form of birds, cats, figures, etc., and are often exhibited in gardens, although most of them seem to flourish in a living room. Their primitive character is reminiscent of the Etruscan sculpture from which Giacometti, one of John Martini's principal masters, was also inspired.
Exhibited for the twelfth time at the Gallery, John Martini will present a selection of recent, less filiform and ghostly sculptures. In this respect, they are different from the works created on the island of Key West, which stretched towards the sky due to lack of space. His French creations seem to have adapted to our volumes.
His works on paper dislocate the bodies, while the heads appear to emerge in bright colours and are not without reminding us of his work as a sculptor.
