Encounters are what make up our lives. Not only the encounter from person to person, but also the encounter with a work of art, a drawing or a sculpture. Everything can confront us in such a dialogical way that we encounter "address" in it. This is shown in this correspondence, which is not only a dialogue with the sculptor Martin Mayer, in which his understanding of art is discussed. It is also a conversation with his sculptures, which always address the viewer unexpectedly and directly. Martin Mayer's formal language has the inherent power to create dialogue situations that open up scope for imagination, associations and interpretations.
Martin Mayer's art - an aesthetic of earthiness and simplicity - aims at the original. The forms of his figures want to reveal the essence of a figure. They keep an open mind, simply want to be there, to delight and entertain, but also to inspire and challenge. They ask questions about life as we have it. To hear them speak, you have to get involved with them, give yourself to them without reservation. Basically, it is not enough just to have a conversation with them. To experience their timeless beauty and powerful radiance, one must be in conversation with their form, from which their content emerges.
The letter conversations are also a quiet chronicle of friendship. It began decades ago at the North Sea in St. Peter Ording in front of an amber shop, where Marie-Luise Heyde first met the sculptor Martin Mayer. They were looking at the displays. When she noticed the interest of the man standing next to her and they started talking, she said, "Most of the pieces you see here are not real at all. Come on. I'll show you finds from Böhler Beach and give you one as a present." It was the beginning of an encounter that became a friendship. In the following summers, Martin Mayer and his wife Sigrune were often our guests in St. Peter, still in the house of Erna Meyer, my wife's mother, and later with us in Schleswig and Jübeck.
Of all the interpersonal relationships that come to us in the course of life, friendship seems to me the most beautiful and unusual. As a purpose-free relationship, it is a child of freedom, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "Most precious, rarest blossom - the freedom of the playing, daring and familiar spirit springing up in a happy hour - is the friend of the friend."
Prologue to:
Dietrich Heyde
Briefgespräche mit dem Bildhauer Martin Mayer
Leupelt, Handewitt, 2019
ISBN 978-3-943582-22-2