Page 24 - Studio International - May June 1975

Fountain in stainless steel, 1961. Brixton Day College, London.
Height above water 5 ft

The Work of

Kenneth Martin

Paul Overy

Kenneth Martin worked as a painter colour or black. A few are in more than For just as a painter can bring to
until he began to produce one colour. The lines are laid in on a sculpture a freshness that the habitual
constructions in the early nineteen- densely built-up surface of thick white sculptor may have lost, so can the
fifties, when he was in his late forties. paint. This rich and sympathetic surface sculptor reinvigorate painting. It was
Although he never stopped painting gives a remarkable quality of light, the quality of freshness and lucidity that
it occupied a less important place in presenting a pristine field on which the marked Martin's early constructions
his work than construction in three bundles of black or coloured lines amongst the worried surfaces and
dimensions. But over the last six perform a slow but lively dance. `geometry of fear' of the sculpture of the
years he has been producing a large Ezra Pound called poetry the dance of fifties in Britain. And it is the same
number of paintings, drawings and the intellect among words. Martin's quality that marks out his Chance and
prints, many of these part of the paintings are the dance of the intellect Order pictures from the eclectic mish-
series called Chance and Order on amidst paint. Ideas about form, order mash of the painting of the late sixties or
which he has been working since and chance and the nature of the world early seventies. And if painting now
1969. The paintings are the finest are given the flesh of pigment. The seems to have little to offer, Martin's
works that Martin has done and paintings are clearly a development work is an important and instructive
among the best abstract paintings of the ideas that can be found in Martin's exception. At a time when artists are
produced in Europe since the war. constructions. But they break new ground worried about the painting being a
Sheaves of black or coloured lines are and are a remarkable achievement for a saleable object on a wall, Martin's
spread out in configurations on the man in his late sixties (Martin was method of working offers one of the few
canvas, their position, direction and seventy in April). One reason for their ways out of that impasse. For a series of
contiguity the result of chance, ordered excellence is that these are paintings by paintings as rigorous as Chance and
within a system of limited possibilities. an artist who has spent most of the last Order can cease to be a collection of
Most of the paintings are in a single twenty years working in three dimensions. objects or merchandise and become

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