Maria Martins (artist)

Martins was completely marginalized in accounts of Surrealism for decades, despite her sculpture being included in a number of surrealist exhibitions and publications and the prominent role she played in the movement during the 1940s.[9] Martins came to the surrealist movement late. She borrowed artists like Giacometti, Ernst, and Arp. Martins learned to work in bronze from Jacques Lipchitz, whose influence can perhaps be seen in “Impossible III” (1946).[10] Brazilian anthropophagy and cannibalism interested Martins and informed much of her later work. Example of this can be seen in works like her 1942 sculpture “Yara,” inspired by the Tupi or Guarani Indian myth of a man-eating river goddess. Yara would sing her song of seduction to passing men enticing them to visit her jungle domain where she would devour them, like an insect in a Venus flytrap. Imagery like this caught the attention of Surrealist Movement founder, Andre Breton, at her 1943 exhibition at the Valentine Gallery. Here, Breton connected Maria’s interest in the mythology of the Amazon River with his own desire to create new myths to base a future society on. Breton recounted the impact Martin’s sculpture had on him in his preface to her 1947 exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery:

”Maria’s sculpture began to carry a whole legend on its shoulders, a legend that was nothing less than the Amazon itself. Sculpture garlanded, like the Amazon’s own waters, with tropical creepers. This legend sang in those works of hers which I had the chance to see in New York in 1943 and admired so greatly. Just as it sang with all its immemorial voices man’s passion from birth to death, re-created in symbols of unparalleled denseness by the Indian tribes which have succeeded each other along those treacherous banks. In her bronzes...Maria has succeeded marvelously in capturing at their primitive source not only anguish, temptation and fever, but also the sunrise, happiness and calm, and even occasionally pure delight; she is the emanation of all these things, all these wings and flowers. Maria owes nothing to the sculpture of the past or the present—she is far too sure, for that, of the original rhythm which is increasingly lacking in modern sculpture; she is prodigal with what the Amazon has given her—the overwhelming abundance of life."[9]

Breton did not know that Maria’s interest in her cultural myths pre-dated her involvement with the Surrealists by over a decade. This can be seen in the works she made in the mid-to-late 1930s under the influence of Catherine Barjanski whom she studied with in Paris, and Oscar Jespers whom she studied with in Belgium. Though most of the sculptures Martins made before moving to America in 1939 are now lost, a visual record of these works is found in an unpublished photograph album that she assembled in the early 1940s documenting her early sculptures. Martins carved her early figures in wood from the subtropical jacaranda tree, which is native to Brazil. Jacaranda’s straight grain and relatively soft, knot-free properties made it ideal for sculpting. Martins chose this specific wood also to resonate with the Brazilian themes of her work. Her 1939 work “Macumba” references the underground Afro-Brazilian religion, imagery she frequently references in subsequent works.[9]

Martins had an affair with the artist Marcel Duchamp, which lasted for several years from 1946 onwards, ending with her departure for Brazil in 1951 and with his 1954 marriage to his second wife Alexina Duchamp.[11] In 2009, members of Martins's family released letters written by Duchamp and Martins that substantiated previous claims that Martins was indeed the model for the nude figure in Duchamp's final masterpiece, the Étant donnés, as opposed to his wife Teeny.[12] It is now widely acknowledged that Martins was the model for the reclining nude torso in Duchamp's installation piece and that his wife Alexina (Teeny) served only as the model for the figure's arms.[12]

On her return to Brazil in 1949, critics in Brazil did not favor her work, feeling it was non-traditional and too erotic.[9] Martins helped to found the very first edition of the São Paulo Art Biennial.[7]  While in Brazil she took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris 1959-1960, New York (1960–61) and San Paulo (1967).[6] Martins leveraged her international connections to promote modern art in Brazil.[9] She helped found the Venice Biennale in 1951 and was a founding member of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio in 1952.[5] Later in her life she returned to writing and published poetry and essays on Friedrich Nietzsche and China.[5]