Anton Martineau (1926-2017) - Untitled

Anton Martineau (1926-2017)

Lived in Amsterdam and trained at the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague) and the Rijksacademie van beeldende kunsten (Amsterdam). Anton Martineau is an artist of international stature; he exhibited in 1967 with Saura and Tapies at Galerie Stadler in Paris. Together with his friend Jan Sierhuis he belonged to a somewhat younger generation than the Cobra painters. His oeuvre consists of paintings, drawings and prints in a strongly expressive figurative style. Spontaneous drawing plays an important role in his work.

Subjects are, first and foremost: the human, dancing couples, tango, eroticism, drama of love and death, joy and fear, absurd portraits and still lifes. His lyrical style was sometimes categorized as international New Figuration but also shows affinity with the Cobra and Lucebert expressions. He was therefore friends with Karel Appel, Corneille and the poet Gerrit Kouwenaar. Because of his wish to follow his own path, he did not seek close alignment with Cobra. Yet the development of his work in the mid-1960s coincided with the zeitgeist of the Provo movement and the sexual revolution. The pleasure Martineau derives from painting and handling the material oil paint may be evidenced by his comparison of the sensuous experience of squeezing a tube of paint with an orgasm, … while the actual work has yet to begin.

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