By Franz Roh

If one really feels one's way into the art of a time, one can, as if taking a geological cross section, distinguish three stylistic layers: a conservative zone lying at the bottom, as it were, above it a moderately fluctuating zone and finally a distinctly experimental, avant-garde zone.

The usual dispute between them (an eternal phenomenon) is futile, because as long as these various layers exist, each of them can become current again later, and because they immediately encounter corresponding layers of recipients, the audience, under whatever sociological conditions they may live. After all, varying degrees of quality are possible at all levels, which alone guarantee a longer period of validity.

One should not, as was popular in the 19th century, place the main value on the fact that the work embeds itself in the "proven tradition", but also not, as is common today, see the main significance in its so-called "innovation value", as this in turn quickly becomes outdated.

The young sculptor Martin Mayer, who has been living in Munich for many years, belongs to the conservative level. In no way does he want to disregard the human body in his creations and, for example, make the material speak in other, self-purposeful structures, be it static or "mobile". But he also does not want to be regarded as a naturalist who works out the moving musculature or the skin stimuli in the body, for example, as can be found in the midst of the otherwise so bold liberties of a Rodin. One could rather connect him to Maillol. In so far as the latter takes the human body as a rounded, specifically sculptural mass.

Just as many artists have a theme that they vary again and again throughout their lives without ever becoming monotonous, for example the horse and rider motif of the sculptor Marini, or the vases and pots of the painter Morandi, for Martin Mayer it is the female body in which he lives out his emotions. His women are vegetative creatures who appear entirely self-contained. Their limbs are in a resting equilibrium, enlivened only by the slightest movement. Despite their space-displacing fullness, they have a secret charm; despite their sensuality, they remain restrained. The sequence of and tension between their curves and planes is so convincing that even the abstracting eye is always satisfied.

This young sculptor operates between "empathy and abstraction" (to commemorate Worringer's polarity). Martin Mayer was a favourite pupil of Theodor Georgii, Hildebrand's son-in-law. But he avoids the relief-like orientation that Hildebrand, with his "theory of the optimal standpoint" of the viewer, wanted to inject into the free-standing figure.

Franz Roh
Martin Mayer
Druckhaus Nürnberg, 1965