Denis Martinez

Denis Martinez , painter born in Algeria in 1941, chose to remain there after Independence. Constrained with the exile in 1994 he lives and works since with Marseilles.

Biography

Denis Martinez is born on November 30th, 1941 at March-El-Hadjadj (Béthioua) in Oran IE. He draws since childhood the landscapes and the scenes of the Oranian countryside. From 1957 to 1962 he lives with Blida where his/her father, house painter, became factor. He follows the teaching of the School of the Art schools to Algiers then to Paris. From 1963 he is professor at the School of the Art schools of Algiers, where its teaching exerts a durable influence on several generations of artists, and takes part in the first exposures organized after Independence in Algiers and Paris, then with the majority of the collective exposures of Algerian painting in Algeria and abroad. He presents in 1964 his first personal exposure to Algiers, prefaced by Jean Sénac.

Denis Martinez is one of the founders, with Choukri Mesli, of the group Aouchem. (Tattooing) which exposes in 1967,1968 and 1971. Gathering ten artists, painters and poets, he is opposed to the imageries considered to be demagogic that the official gallery of the National union of the Visual arts presents, founded in 1963 but from which the majority of the active painters were excluded. “Aouchem was born millenia ago, on the walls of a cave of the Tassili. It continued its existence until our days, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, according to the fluctuations of the History. (...) We intend to show that, always magic, the sign is stronger than the bombs”, declares their “Proclamation”. In spite of violences, certain plastic traditions succeeded in being maintained in the gestures which model and paint clay, weave wool, decorate the walls, engrave wood or metal: it is on these survivals that “Aouchem” wants to rest.

Denis Martinez receives in 1975 the Grand Prix of Painting of the Town of Algiers. In 1973 and 1976 it takes part in the realization of two collective murals for the village of Maamora (Saïda) and for the workers of the Wearing of Algiers. A retrospective of its painting is presented to the Museum of Algiers in 1985. It creates in 1986 a fountain-monument in Céramique in Blida and organizes of 1986 to 1992 with its students of the interventions or actions , in Blida ( last words of a wall ), at the oil base of In Amenas and in Kabylie (Ain-el-Hammam, Maâtkas).

In 1994 Denis Martinez leaves Algeria and becomes in 1995 teaching at the School of the Art schools of Aix-en-Provence. He takes part in 1998 in Peintres of the Sign (Festival of Humanity; Courneuve, road show). In 2000 and 2001 it creates the elements and the setting in scene of a procession of 7 Aghanjas for Peace with Forcalquier and Loriol, in 2002 a performance in several places, Fenêtre of the wind sequences, [[Timimoun], Ecole of the Art schools (Algiers), Maison of Poetry (Saint Martin's day d' Hères), Clos Maria (Aix-en-Provence), Bérangère (Drome), Robin, Lombez (Gers), religious Organization Berbère (Paris)]. Taking part in 2003 in the exposure the twentieth century in Algerian art , (Borély Castle, Marseilles; Orangery of the Senate, Paris), it exposes to Pau, Désorientalisme with the Museum of the Art schools and Dessins on sand and the walls (Installation) at the University of Arts and the communication, like in Marseilles.

Denis Martinez published several plates of poems ( Five in your eyes (collective) 1977; Non I do not want to say , 1977; It is quite useless , 1978; It is perhaps like that , 1988) and of drawings ( Ihelleouen , with an introduction of Dominique Devigne, 1991). It illustrated several collections of Abdelhamid Laghouati ( Where passed the large herd? , 1988; Gerçures , 1994; Wanderings ), of the anthologies ( Hydrants fire , poems of Hamid Tibouchi, Abdelhamid Laghouati, Tahar Djaout, Messaour Boulanouar, O. Azredj and A. Hamdi, 1983; Algeria in the middle , 1994; Faces and silences of Algeria , 1997) and of the works around Jean Sénac.

Work

It is perhaps its “primitive” character resolutely which would define best the work of Denis Martinez. Not that it carries out its paintings under the only blow, to remain to him faithful, of an impulse first. The Log book held by the painter in 1982 throughout the realization of one of its works, and published in 1985 in the catalog of its retrospective to the Museum of Algiers, proclamation how much patience and the critical distance are combined at his place with spontaneousness and the significant need to act on its fabric. It is not a question either with Martinez of a rough creation, developing with the variation, in the ignorance of the art of passed like modern attempts. Its work quite to the contrary rests on a thorough knowledge of Maghrebian art since its more remote sources, in an impregnation which is at the same time exploration and active metamorphosis.

“Primitive” the firm will of Martinez would mean rather to break the traditional limits of painting. This concern took by successive waves of the varied forms. The first is that of its painted reliefs exposed in 1964. The discovery which in 1961 Martinez of research of the Morrocan Cherkaoui makes after those of Siqueiros, as of the Années 1920, with the Mexico makes him become aware of conditioning that it underwent, directs it towards the African culture and the plastic symbolic system of Maghrebian popular art. It starts to question ritual, existential dimension of it and undertakes to return to its pre-colonial sources like the Mexicans had done it, in-on this side Spanish classicism, at their origins précolombiennes. The reliefs which it carries out as from 1963, assembling and painting, transfiguring the most heteroclite materials, are thus not without presenting some relationship with the totems, fetishes and nouets.

These concerns crystallize under the sign of nonconformism, in reaction against the traps of orientalism and of a socialist realism threatening, in the spirit of the group Aouchem (Tattooing). First introduction of the writing into its work, Martinez then integrates into the composition of its reliefs then of its fabrics of the handwritten inscriptions in Arab dialectal or French, poetic slogans which run the counter to any demagogic speech. While, in the Années 1970, the color gains in intensity and that graphics is sharpened, assembles in the foreground of its fabrics the face each time different from the character which will not cease any more signing its painting.

The blind glances that Martinez lends fabric in fabric to him seems to cross the glance which meets it and, in a world reduced to the hunger, with the anguish, shame and the contempt, to continue beyond the monolog of the distress ( Misère and misery , the child of the dump , 1975; martyrs of the underdevelopment , 1977. The spectator does not escape faintness: this wounded crowd, folded up on her pain, it can test the impression that it is him whom she disfigures and challenges, about to show it of this misfortune of which he cannot completely not be the author. Painter of the human condition, Martinez, in his anxious and worrying work, initially does not seek to like, is not diverted a the man trampled (1977), does not impose from the start of the answers, puts rather on the way of the questions.

From 1978 the climate of its painting changes: a new plastic element emerges there and dominates it. After a voyage in Andalusia, with the sources of art hispano-Maghrebian, letters and bits of the Arab Penmanship, in a new attempt at integration of the writing, the faces accompany, them build and express them ( Douloureuse identification , 1979; the alphabet of the cry , 1981). In page layouts braiding of the reasons which take as a starting point the fabrics and ceramics, it is in a window of the fabric that omnipresent the character appears thereafter ( Okda , 1985).

In 1986 Martinez in cost with the reliefs and carries out cut out fabrics which it joins together under the title of I takes, I give, I send, I receive . Multiply there the graphic arrows which express the movements and relations of the character , through a fine geometry of points and zigzaging lines which evoke the signs of the sun, stars and a whole popular bestiary of bees and frogs, snakes and tortoises. These signs, in 1989, fall under the rates/rhythms of the space of the houses Berbère S, where the character seems to penetrate ( Me Kharbech Be Niya Safia seeks human places ). With the drawings ( marchem ) that it starts to practice on the model of the layouts divinatoires, in sand, of the extreme South, Martinez, combining Berber painting and géomancie, signs Tifinagh and reasons, deploys of only one and even milked an exuberant fauna, where the lizard becomes its clean totem.

The processions which it organizes in 1992 in Kabylie, later in France to not beseech in a traditional way the rain but more politically peace in Algeria in prey with terrorism of the Intégrisme, and its drawings on sand and walls, with the assistance of poets and musicians, constitute a result, between performance and Installation, of its will to open its art with another repercussion, another implication that distant contemplation. It would seem that once again Denis Martinez seeks to divert, to rectify the route of painting, to deliver it of a single tradition, to graft of them the means on a new magic, another vocation, more vital, of which null time of last does not propose the model precisely.

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