Bruno Martinazzi. An Artist Philosopher in Jewelry

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Bruno Martinazzi

Goldsmith and sculptor Bruno Martinazzi (1923 Turin – 2018 Ansedonia) is one of the foremost historical personalities in international jewelry. This medium was not even his first choice, though. He was equally fond of music and painting as of literature and poetry: inclinations which were virtually instilled in him at birth. Born into a highly regarded family in Turin in 1923, he went on to pursue studies in chemistry and to work in the textile industry, before turning his hand to goldsmithing. His earliest works therefore testify influences by abstract art movements of the postwar period, such as Tachisme and Informel.

However, Martinazzi truly achieved his calling, with his distinct thumbprint, in the 1960s with the body fragment motif, which went on to dominate his oeuvre in the widest array of manifestations. It became his “trademark”: pithy excerpts, expressive details of mouth, posterior, foot, hand, eye, demonstrating not solely sculptural presence, but as a metaphorical sign, as “pars pro toto”, referring to the whole, to Creation, to becoming and passing, functioning as their symbols and deliberately enthroned as such by Martinazzi. He strove always to penetrate matter, to achieve a fusion of beauty and intellect, aesthetics and philosophy.
 
He was accompanied on this path by writings and texts from occidental history, predominantly by Plato or, for instance, Dante, Augustine, Ovid, Petrarch, but also T.S. Eliot and Kant. His worldview fused antiquity and modernity into one deep texture, which was intended to unite and illustrate humanism, critical ethics, and innovation in contemporary beautiful, indeed seductive pieces of jewelry. Martinazzi devoted himself to reading not as a systematic theorist, but as a creative collector. In correspondence with his sources, his jewelry draws up aphorisms, as it were; appearing there, for instance, are “Dio fanciullo", “Afrodite”, “Angelo”, “Icaro”, “Narcisso”, “Kaos”, the hand participating in Creation, the destructive fist. In gold (and stone), Martinazzi conjures reduced, abstract images, which originate in his cosmos of archetypes; he formulates paraphrases of a great Creation idea. Not by coincidence does Fritz Falk, formerly director of the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, define this singular jewelry artist as a humanist, committed to the ideal of Renaissance Man.

Man is, without a doubt, at the heart of Martinazzi’s thinking and creating. He cultivated a culture and attitude that appear, in the 21st century, antagonistic to the frenetic and media-centric present day. Yet his statements in jewelry touch upon the phenomenon of memes, images or videos that go viral on the Internet, in our cyber world. It is a return of myths and symbols that survived whole eons, reinterpreted and transformed and simply unbeatable in their constancy and brilliance.
 
Martinazzi was revered and appreciated in Germany from the beginning.  He received awards and distinctions: for example, in 1965, the State Award of Bavaria and, in 1987, the Ring of Honor of the Association of Goldsmiths' Art. Numerous exhibitions were added to these.

In thematically divided tableaux, the exhibition at the German Goldsmiths' House Hanau follows the artist’s central ideas and, with more than 100 objects, some previously unseen, as well as drawings and statements from the Archivio Martinazzi in Turin, affords insights into the ramifications and secrets of his timeless jewelry creation.


Curated by Ellen Maurer Zilioli.
In partnership with the Archivio Martinazzi, Turin.

Opening:
18 Nov 2021, 5 - 8 pm.