La Pisana

In Martini's intense activity, rich in inventiveness and surprises, all the myths and illusions of modern civilisation passed through the sieve. The synthesis of archaism and classicism, the apparent cultural eclecticism, which in the concrete work nonetheless rises above any hint of archaeology or ethnography, undoubtedly contributed to the definition of so-called Martinian primitivism; imperceptibly, however, the need for a stylistic purism, for a clear plastic structure with closed and elementary profiles, was enriched by sensual and trembling humours, by subtle and refined rhythms that seem to echo, in a different syntax, the tepid luminosity of certain marbles by Canova. But something unripe, something conflicted, excludes Martini's sculpture from the Olympian assurance (which is always, after all, on the edge of coldness) of the Neoclassical master and enriches it with emotional and sentimental resonances, with disturbances and uncertainties that make the sculptor a full participant in the “state of perennial crisis” of contemporary civilisation.