Net and Triton

Ezio Martinelli

"Net and Triton", published by the International Graphic Arts Society (IGAS) is a wonderful example of the two worlds of artistic thought, old and new, colliding: expert, classical technical skill and a Surrealist composition, executed in a medium (color engraving) that had only recently begun to separate from its mechanical, commercial beginnings.

Triton was a Greek god, a merman that was human to his waist, with the tail of a fish. The son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, the god and goddess of the sea, Triton was considered the messanger of the sea. He is depicted with a twisted conch shell which he used to calm or raise the waves of the seas.

Former Brooklyn Museum print curator Una E. Johnson commented about this work: "...His prints form and exquisite accompaniment to his more fomral work. Martinelli often employs a print medium to evolve a theme or composition for sculpture or painting. In his recent print, 'Net and Triton', where the thrust and counter thrust of movement is concentrated in the strong figures of two gladiators, the artist develops a basically sculptural idea."

Ezio Martinelli was born in West Hoboken, New Jersey on November 27, 1913. His art training began in 1931 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy and was followed by study in New York at the National Academy of Design from 1932 to 1936, as well as at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.

In the early 1940s Martinelli turned his attention to printmaking, working with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York. Martinelli taught Graphic Arts at the Philadelphia Museum School and the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Arts between 1946 and 1949. Between the years 1949 and 1975, he was Professor of Art at the Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York teaching painting and sculpture. He also taught Graphic Arts at Parsons School of Design in New York between 1954 and 1957.

Martinelli was awarded Guggenheim Foundation fellowships between 1956 and 1962, a Tiffany Foundation fellowship in 1964, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters award in 1966. In addition to being in the collections of the Hunterian Museum and University Art Collection in Glasgow, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Newark Museum, Seattle Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago, his aluminum sculpture is on the grounds of the United Nations General Assembly Building in New York, facing the East River.

Ezio Martinelli died at the age on July 1, 1981 at age 68 in upstate New York and his papers are housed at Syracuse University.