By Herbert List
10 years have passed since then, it was just before the currency reform. I found myself at a dealer of old prints, whose little shop was so packed that one could hardly move. While I was browsing through old drawings, someone entered and asked, "Do you buy hand drawings?" "Yes," the dealer said, "let me see them." Reluctantly, the young man handed him the portfolio. He was a little stocky. Standing out in a large head were a pair of bright blue eyes.
The folder contained nude drawings, clearly outlined by bold charcoal strokes. "No," said the dealer, "I'm afraid that's not for me. As you can see, I only deal in old graphics". I had looked over the young man's shoulder and was impressed by his confident simplification of line work. When I asked him who he was, he answered somewhat abruptly and inhibitedly: "I am a student at the academy, sculptor, 18 years old and my name is MARTIN MAYER".
So I asked him to show me more drawings. I visited him at the academy and took pictures of some of his large works sculpted in clay. Like all students at that time, he had to destroy them again. The clay was in short supply and so it had to be used again and again.
What I liked about Martin Mayer was his clear sincerity towards himself and others, and in connection with this a primal power in everything he created, a power that was neither restricted by the intellect nor by aesthetics. His sculptures were still bound to nature and were partly under the influence of his teacher Theodor Georgii. But when one saw him working like a man possessed, one felt that there was a clear creative will behind it. Even the following years of material deprivation could not break or hinder it.
Sporadically, at intervals of 2 to 3 years, he showed me the works he had created in the meantime. One could see how he was freeing himself more and more from naturalism and from the influence of his teacher. In the middle of last year he showed me his latest works, a series of about ten medium-sized sculptures. These female figures made a great impression on me. The final achievement of the form showed that Martin Mayer had inwardly found an adequate way of expression.
Just as for many artists there is a theme that they vary again and again throughout their lives without ever becoming monotonous, as for the sculptor Marini, for example: horse and rider, or as for the painter Morandi: vases and pots, so for Martin Mayer it is the female body in which he lives out his emotions. His women are vegetative creatures that seem to be self-sufficient. Despite their heaviness and fullness, they have a secret charm. The sequence and the tensions of the hollows and surfaces are so compelling that even the abstracting eye is surprised again and again.
In the studio where Martin Mayer worked until the middle of last year, he was not allowed to make large sculptures. The landlord feared that the floor could break through due to the weight. Through Theodor Georgii's bequest, he was then given his studio, which originally belonged to Adolf von Hildebrand. He was able to create his first life-size reclining figure there. The sculptures and drawings on these pages were all created in 1964/1965 and form an inseparable unity both intellectually and stylistically.
After these works, whose vital force and sensitive shaping, alive to all curves, must grip everyone, i.e. not only the friend of the representational but also the friend of abstract design, one may expect many more significant works by Martin Mayer.
From the correspondence Herbert List / Martin Mayer
Draft for the 1965's catalogue