Reflections on Blue Mary Martin

It was during her cooperation with her husband Kenneth Martin that her interest in abstract and constructivist art emerged. Her artistic career actually began in 1950 with her first abstract pictures. A year later she produced her first relief, followed exclusively by works in this genre. She called these constructions “reflections”. Her small, intimate constructions are built from similar cubic forms governed by some logical or mathematical principle. Sometimes she also used these formal elements for large architectural decorations. She labelled the process of creating her works “construction” in contradistinction to abstraction and used industrial materials, perspex, formica or chromium steel. The quiet, meditative character of her early works gave way to sharper, more animated constructions also pieced together from elementary geometrical forms such as half prisms, on whose surface she tended to use reflecting materials: chromium or polished aluminium sheets.

Ferenc Tóth