Maternity

Resting on a seat that acts as a pedestal and covered almost entirely by a cloak that creates a large drapery at the sides, a disturbing figure with a sunken face holds the emaciated body of a young boy in his lap; his head disappears in the embrace that envelops him with bony hands.
The work, made of patinated plaster, reflects the stimuli of the long stay in Munich in 1909. Up to that date, the young Martini had received a first apprenticeship in the local area: Giorgio Martini, father of the already established Alberto, was his drawing teacher at the Evening School of Arts and Crafts, while in the atelier of the sculptor Antonio Carlini, active in the city and close collaborator of Abbot Bailo, he learned the techniques of molding. Subsequently, his frequenting of the Venetian environment and of Urbano Nono's studio, his visit to the Biennials and his participation in the lively Capesarina season led him to his first, daring modeling tests (such as Equilibrio/Contrabassista of 1908).
The Munich period, financed by the Treviso ceramics industrialist Gregorio Gregorj and by the director of the Torcello Museums, Cesare Augusto Levi, constitutes an important moment in his formation: epicenter of the Jugendstil, Munich represents a very popular international destination among the younger generations ( just think that in the same year Springolo, Bortolo Sacchi and Balsamo Stella also stayed there, as well as the De Chirico brothers).
Returning to Treviso, Martini developed a series of innovative plaster models for the Gregorj furnace (only partially entered into production): the experimentation brings back traces of that experience, both in the use of a refined linearism of Secession style (see the Fiaba vase), and in the choice of motifs, characterized by an ambiguous expressiveness.
The work is an effective example of this: the essentiality of the geometric volumes that characterize the back of the sculpture reveal, on the front, a frightening transfiguration of the mother-child group, in which the traditional iconography of Motherhood is overwhelmed by the devastating and deforming pain of death , theme of the Pietà.
It is Martini himself who recalls, as a formal precedent, the Serbian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, among the exhibitors at the Munich Secession of 1909: “The love towards Mestrovic”, he will recall in the Colloqui, “was for that barbarian fund that it's in me too."
Never exhibited during the artist's lifetime and acquired by the Treviso Civic Museums in 1992, Maternità belonged to the collection of her friend and writer Nevra Garatti, whose "little green living room" was a regular meeting place for artists and intellectuals from Treviso.

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Maternita

Maternita

Seated on a chair that serves as a pedestal and almost entirely covered by a cloak that creates a wide drapery on the sides, an unsettling figure with a hollowed face cradles the emaciated body of a young man in her lap; her head disappears into the embrace that envelops him with bony hands. The work, made of patinated plaster, reflects the influences from the artist's long stay in Munich in 1909. Up until that time, the young Martini had received his initial apprenticeship locally: Giorgio Martini, the father of the already established Alberto, was his drawing teacher at the Evening School of Arts and Crafts.