2. Artists & stock
3. Lucien Martini
4. Biography

Notes of biography

The Swiss wood engraver Lucien Martini was born in 1934 in Geneva. He grew up in that city. After graduating from college, he spent two years in the Art Teachers seminary in Geneva (1956-1958). Then he went to Paris for further studies, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he chose the etching section. Back to Switzerland, he started to carve wood, while continuing to draw.
  
 In 1959 he received the « Bourse fédérale des arts appliqués ». From then on he took part in collective and individual exhibitions, while teaching art in Geneva high schools until 1999. In 1963, he took part in the exhibition of the « Jeune gravure genevoise », in the « Cabinet des estampes » of Geneva. He continued to show his works in exhibitions in his native city.
In 1968 he joined « Xylon », a society of wood engravers. He  took part in collective exhibitions, in Puerto Rico with Xylon International in 1970, then, in Switzerland, in Glaris in 1972 and 1973, in Yverdon in 1986, in Winterthur in 1989 and in Bulle in 1990. The woodcutting specialised gallery « Art et Vision » in Bern offered him opportunities for personal exhibitions : he showed his woodcuts there  in 1988, 1998 and 2014.
Music has always played an important part in the artist’s inspiration, and still does. His inner imaginative universe is empowered by it. From his youth on, Lucien Martini has played the piano and also sung. Still now music is present in his daily activities. He carved illustrations of German romantic cycles of Lieder such as « Winterreise » and « Dichterliebe » by Schumann,  which he also sang on several occasions, and « Vier ernste Gesänge » by Brahms. He both sang the songs and was inspired by the songs in his art.
Lucien Martini was deeply impressed by the works of psychologist and researcher Stan Grof who explored the human mind and experience, and followed the steps of other great philosophers-researchers such as C.G. Jung. The Swiss thinker proposed the example of the medieval alchimists, who patiently explored their own minds while working with matter ; and now the modern alchemists enjoy also all the discoveries of modernity.
Lucien Martini usually creates series of engravings which have a theme, a common character.  After the great Lieder cycle series, he created, from 1998 onward, dense, exuberant, mysterious compositions, where elusive  creatures sometimes appear in a network of strokes, little shadows, hiding in foliage, visible only  for a short time. Or else we watch the exploits of Hercules and see other mythological figures, such as the Great Mother, or the Trickster, or the Warrior. The artist says he attempts to make perceptible the powerful undercurrents, the flows, the  links that form an invisible network behind the visible world such as we know it. These forces can be beneficial or ambiguous.
The artist lives and works in Tartegnin, a village near Rolle (Canton de Vaud, Switzerland), a small place on the Lake of Geneva, between Geneva and Lausanne.

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