By Margarethe Krieger
In an artistically polyvalent era like the present one, the sculptor Martin Mayer represents a phenomenon of individuality: For him, individuality as an expressive creative force does not equate to a break with tradition. His attitude, however, is not that of an eclectic traditionalist who uses traditional forms additively in his work.
If Martin Mayer himself verbally and creatively acknowledges tradition, then in the sense that he sees himself as a natural link within an artistically effective chain of development that cannot be interrupted by creative preconditions. Would he therefore be called conservative? Certainly, to a certain extent he is a preserver of what he has found, of what he has already experienced. With increasing maturity, however, the process of modification, of reconstruction, begins, even on the levels of what he has recognised before – a process, therefore, that confirms him as an individualist. This means: A remarkable sculptor who emerged as an heir of Maillol's influence to become a creative graphic artist at the same time, a realist, but not in the usual strained sense. Nature is the spiritual origin of Martin Mayer's art, it is an event, always a stimulus and altogether a fascinating counterpart. It becomes a partner. Whoever reads his chosen confessions to the great tradition of art, which are almost maxims, understands why he encounters nature not only in its creatureliness, but just as intensely in its spiritual value. In this way Martin Mayer overcomes the purely sensual nature and achieves formal principles beyond the creaturely. Thus, it is not nature that becomes the actual starting point for the artist, but the idea immanent in it, recognised by the sculptor and made visible through abstraction.
The center of his work is the woman.
The woman as a visionarily grasped individuality and – the woman as an animal symbol, as a cipher, as an independently closed form – an almost ornamental context, which extends above and beyond the existence of the individual.
"Interest in the naked means interest in the form that expresses absolute life, consequently the essential matter of sculpture for all time," Martin Mayer quotes Adolf Hildebrand by way of explanation. His path, however, leads him further – precisely marked out in his thoughts. Within the field of representational sculpture of the present, he encounters his problem: To give the human figure a new aspect by using its functional possibilities and to let the human being become a pure, formally free entity within or by way of these possibilities, without thereby depriving it of the intensity of life. The connection to the words of Lehmbruck gain meaning here: "Every work of art must have something of the first days of creation, of the smell of the earth..."
Martin Mayer's female nudes prove how strongly, how strictly he, too, has taken on a life of his own. He knows the laws of tradition, which include the concept of abstraction; the process of abstraction, however, never endangers the natural quality of his art by a principle of free and individual reshaping. In two creative decades Martin Mayer has been able to realise important insights for himself in his work: He knows how to renounce and to emphasize, to concentrate, to rearrange - in his unique, somewhat complex case this means that he is capable of "inventing" something new. This power of invention has an original character. Symbolism appears very rarely, if at all. Formal tension, the relationship of curvature to surface, of height to depth first determine these heavy, self-contained female bodies, whose creatureliness only allegedly refers to the natural model. It is – undeniably – alongside the gaze of the abstracting analyst Martin Mayer, the strangely tender gaze of the artist that embraces these bodies and heightens them to an almost Mediterranean sensuality, beautiful in and of itself, full of summer ripeness.
The path from the artist's beginnings at twenty-years old to his present oeuvre at forty has been consistent. One might feel it lacking in lightness. This would not suit Martin Mayer's nature. What he brings to the table is knowledge, indeed, a realised belief in the creatureliness of man, which he shapes into a great, meaningful unity.
The graphic artist in him appears as a creator independent of the sculptor. His charcoal drawings never seek to be preliminary studies for his sculptural work: Important, almost baroque sheets, powerful down to the last detail, formally self-contained to the point of being cipher-like, capturing an essential feature of his sculptures. How much his etchings differ in their fascination with lighting! How could that side of the artist be defined: Is he a conscious portraitist? What strange dualism in one man! The portrait as a reflection of pronounced individuality was present in a peculiarly intense perfection already at the beginning of his sculptural oeuvre. The expression of the strange counterpart, distanced from the artist, already appealed to Martin Mayer during his time as a student - probably the most difficult task to realise for an artist accustomed to working in freedom. It is here, however, that his intellectual and creative discipline is revealed: In the capturing of the individual and its transformation to an artistically valuable design. Skill, diligence, attention to detail and mastery are not enough to approach the human being in such a way, to grasp him in such a way as Martin Mayer succeeds in doing: There is and remains an imponderable involved here - whether it is intuition, whether it is the striation at the border of the concept of genius or quite simply the creative luck that distinguishes this artist from others.
Margarethe Krieger
Martin Mayer
Karl Graf Verlag, Speyer, 1974