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In order
to understand some features of Peters Martinsons' character
and perception of space, We must remember the time, when
after graduating from architecture, a great passion came
into his life-mountain-climbing. A mountaineering
experience. The Caucasus, the snows of Elbrus. Impressions
powerfully detached from everyday life.
In order to go mountaineering he needed long summer holidays.
So the architect Martinsons accepted the challenge to work
at the School of Applied Art with pleasure. Visiting his
colleagues, ceramic artists, he began to work with clay. He
also learned to use the potter's wheel, but above all made moulded and formed clay pieces: candle-sticks, square flower
vases, flat plates, supports as well as milk jugs and
teapots. Then the figurative motifs appeared-Martinsons's
dream birds and horses. Later on , his famous devils. The
simplicity of his creation's size revealed the natural charm
of the clay surfaces.
Peteris Martinsons's first public appearance with his clay
pieces was in 1964, It caused excitement among the ceramic
artists, who preferred to copy ethnographic models.
Martinsons was defended by architects, proving that building
a work of such geometrical forms is something as organic as
the traditional methods. Now it may seem ridiculous, but
then the artist's recognition, his to be or not to be , his
future could be deeply affected and hindered by such
attacks, All this just spurred Martinsons on to continue
what he had begun. In those days he was a rather sharp and
prickly provocateur, who liked to cross borders.
From the tradition, Martinsons was able to take the
essential-the creator growing together with his medium.
Later on he created his work using different technological
methods, but always respecting the ancient potter's
lifestyle and ethic-to be a part of the whole creative
cycle-from the selection of material, preparation to firing
the kiln, and understanding the mysteries of glazing. All
Martinsons's creations, his children, as he calls them,
belong to, fit in and match one family.
"We have kilns fired with wood," says Martinsons. " The
presence of living fire. If the artist befriend his medium
and fire , then it is reciprocated . I don't
think that my work is sterile , it is an answer to my love
and wish to be understood.
His trained intuition and architectural knowledge, which from
the beginning has disciplined his perception, helps to
realize the great role of opposites, different interactions
and contrasts. It appears in the composition of particular
forms and motifs, enjoying the use of different
materials-the essential qualities of fine clay, the noble
and capricious porcelain, the meagre mass of stone, and the
uneven and grainy fired clay ( chamotte ).
In the early 1970s, Martinsons turned to expression of a
profoundly laconic manner. He created white cubes with
painfully sharp, crosswise fissures as if split by
lightning. A sonorous five-element composition "Flow" with a
rosy-white surface shimmer. The "Opening" is also a work in
light tones. and it can be seen now as a composite, now
closed and now in an open manner." That is my time of
embracing everything," said Peteris Martinsons. His work has
received many prizes at international exhibitions-three gold
medals and gratuites in Faience, Italy, and prizes in Gdansk
and Sopot.
Then we must note two fantastic periods of work in Potltava.
In 1976 he created a group of cylindrical forms "Touches of
Poltava" and porcelain spheres" Other Worlds", which won
Martinsons a third gold medal in Faenza. In the winter of
1980-81, for the second time Peteris left alone for a
voluntary creative exile in Poltava. He returned with a
whole collection-213 works. The "Melancholy
Composition"-fragile, white and hazy cylindrical forms. And
a whole set of set of different forms, which made me think
in anticipation of space and flight trajectories, of bigger
and smaller spheres, graceful and slim in the form of
rockets, with incredibly exacting areas of blue-and
rose-colored glazing. There were also improvised objects-the
idea taken from the forms of factory-produced everyday
objects like teapots and other things, the so-called
"Interplanetary |
