Drawing for Pierced Relief

In this drawing Mary Martin demonstrates how the positive and negative spaces formed by a single line informed the composition of Pierced Relief (1959). [1] Martin had developed a theory of minimal drawing in the 1950s, influenced in part by the artist Paul Klee. She highlights the significance of minimal drawing for the Pierced Relief series in a statement published in the journal Studio International, with an image of Pierced Relief (1959):

‘The first constructed reliefs I made were based on the moving format of Cubism combined with a system of positive and negative spaces (1951-4). The positive-negative line of Paul Klee helped me to break out of this […] I was developing a theory of minimal drawing which culminated in the arrangement of the walls in No.9 ‘This is Tomorrow’ Whitechapel 1956. The series of Pierced Reliefs were also based on minimal drawing.’ [2]

Michael Morris was an early supporter of Mary Martin’s work, sharing her confidence in the new aesthetic possibilities that constructed abstract art presented. Morris acquired Pierced Relief (1959) from Martin in 1960, after seeing it in the exhibition Essays in Movement: Reliefs by Mary Martin, Mobiles by Kenneth Martin at the ICA in London.

Lisa Newby, January 2021

[1] Pierced Relief (1959) is in the Sainsbury Centre Collection, 31562. For an overview of Mary Martin’s work and the significance of the Pierced Relief series, see Alastair Grieve, Constructed Abstract Art in England: A Neglected Avant-Garde (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2005), pp.151-166. Grieve refers directly to this drawing in the footnote on p.267.

[2] ‘Statement by Mary Martin, December 1967’, published in Alan Bowness ‘The Constructive art of Mary Martin’, Studio International, 175, No. 898 (March 1968), p.121.