BIOGRAPHY

America, b.1953

Donald Martiny is interested in allowing gesture to escape from the traditional rectangular support and realize its potential in relation to architectural space. Each piece encourages a dialogue between the viewer, the work, and the space contained within. The art of Donald Martiny exists somewhere between painting and sculpture. We are confronted with a singular brushstroke; huge; a seemingly spontaneous, lavish eruption of color and texture on the wall.

Donald Martiny was born in Schenectady, NY in 1953 and currently lives and works in Connecticut. He studied at the School of the Visual Arts, The Art Students League in New York, New York University and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Museum exhibitions include the FWMoA, Courtauld Institute of Art, Alden B Dow Museum of Art, Falmouth Museum, and the Cameron Art Museum. In 2015 Martiny received a commission from the Durst Organization to create two monumental paintings that are permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. In 2015 Martiny received the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts Residency Grant and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, NPR, Philadelphia Inquirer, VOGUE LIVING |  Australia, New American Paintings | South and Woven Tale Press. Martiny’s work is represented by galleries in Europe, the US and Australia and is collected internationally.

“Donald Matiny’s work forces us to question the established definitions which form the backbone of our understanding of painting as both a pursuit and a product and of apint as a medium. In challenging the viewer in these ways, it is not only visually exciting but intellectually invigorating.” -Professor Deborah Swallow, Märit Rausing Director, The Courtauld Institute of Art 

“In the 1950s, artists like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline elevated the gesture to the position of the protagonist in abstract expressionism. In the 21^st century, Donald Martiny advances that idea considerably further by freeing the gesture of gestural abstraction from the substrate which, heretofore, provided the context that brought gesture to life. Working with polymers and dispersed pigments, Mr. Martiny has developed a methodology that enables him to isolate his sumptuous, almost sculptural, brushstrokes and lift them off the page, so to speak. The nature of his material is such that Mr. Martiny can work a much largre scale than if he were dependent on a canvas surface; indeed, each singular brushstroke might range from two – to as much as six feet in length. Installed, these compelling monochromatic gestures immediately breathe a new kind of life into the gallery space.

Historically, Mr. Martiny’s work to date fits right into the continuum of monochromatic painting, a contemporary reductive movement that has advanced the concerns and broadened the interests of the classic Minimalists of the 1960s and of the much ealier Suprematists, who openly sought the ‘death of paint’ with their monochromatic efforts. Mr. Martiny belongs to a family of painters, including such luminaries as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, and Olivier Mossett. Amazingly, these distinguished artists brought something noticeably different to this admittedly singular and restrictive approach to painting. Before Mr. Martiny, though, each of these other great painters relied on manipulating the relationship between canvas and pigment to achieve subtle nuanced differences in each painting. Mr. Martiny has greatly expanded the painterly agenda by taking the brushstroke completely off the canvas entirely. I applaud his commitment to furthering the monochromatic agenda and his ability to make fresh, new work that acknowledges, rather than negates, decades of previous good work. Rather than hastening the death of painting as Rodchenko forecast, monochromatic painting has already enjoyed a long lifeline and, in the hands of Donald Martiny, is alive and well.” -Charles Shepard III, Director, Fort Wayne Museum of Art

EDUCATION

1977 – 80     School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
1980-83       The Arts Students League, New York, NY
1988-90       New York University, New York, NY
2007-09       Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

2016-17

All Things Great and Small, Falmouth Art Museum, Cornwall, UK, Curated by Natalie Rigby
Donald Martiny | Paintings, Alden B. Dow Museum, Midland, MI, Curated by Charles A. Shepard III and Joslyn Elliot, Sponsored by the FWMoA

2014-15

INTERACT: East Wing Biennial, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (With Bridget Riley, Julie Mehretu, and Felix Gonzalez Torres)
CAM | Contemporary Art Museum | Raleigh Sponsored by Citrix, Curated by Marjorie H. Hodges, Director, Contemporary Art Foundation
State of the Art | Art of the State, Cameron Art Museum, Curated by: Laura Hoptman, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Peter Eleey, MoMA PS1
Nora Burnett Abrams, MCA | Denver
Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen
Donald Martiny: Freeing the Gesture, (Traveling exhibition)
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2020   

Fischtein Gallery, Toronto, Canada | Opening in June

2019

SINGULARFORMS, Madison Gallery, San Diego, CA
ImaginArt, Barcelona, Spain

2018

Freeing the Gesture, Historic City Hall, Lake Charles, LA
Art Karlsruhe – Rheinstetten with Galerie Klaus Braun, Germany

2017

Overtones / Undercurrents, Horace Williams House, Preservation Chapel Hill, NC
Artea Gallery, Milan, Italy
Donald Martiny, New Works, Diel Gallery, Jackson, WY
Sponder Gallery at Art Market San Francisco
Mariam Diehl Gallery, Jackson, WY | July – August
Pentimenti Gallery at Volta, New York, NY | March
NIOBasement, Rotterdam, NL
Pittura A Macchia, Madison Gallery, La Jolla, CA

2016

Après Ski and Art, Diehl Gallery, Jackson, WY
Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall, UK
Moving Paint, Galleri Urbane, Dallas, TX
Galerie Klaus Braun, Stuttgart, DE
Donald Martiny Paintings, Freeing The Gesture, Alden B Dow Museum of Art and Science,
Midland, MI
Made In Paint, Golden, New Berlin, NY
Donald Martiny, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2015

Donald Martiny | Gestures, University of North Carolina | John and June Allcott Gallery, Curated by Elin O’Hara Slavic, director of graduate studies at UNC
Donald Martiny | Gestures, Madison Gallery, La Jolla, CA

2014

Donald Martiny: Freeing the Gesture, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN
Donald Martiny Paintings and Works on Paper, Curated by Janusz Jaworski, Courtesy of the Durst Organization.
Condé Nast Atrium, New York, NY
George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2013

Galleri Urbane Marfa+Dallas, Dallas, TX
George Lawson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2012

Carrack Modern Art, Durham, NC

2011

POST Herman Street Studios, Philadelphia, PA

2010

Donald Martiny: Prototypes and Studies,High Point Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019

Palazzo Tito, Bevilaqua La Masa Foundation in Padova, Italy
Artist-Collector, A Contemporary Print Exhibition, College of Fine Arts and Design,     University of Sharja, UAE
Art Karlsruhe, February 21-24 | With Galerie Klaus Braun | Rheinstetten, Germany
Arte Fiera Bologna, With ArteA Gallery , Bologna, Italy

2018

Art Miami with Sponder Gallery at Art Miami, FL
Modern & Contemporary Art West Palm Beach with Sponder Gallery, FL

2017

Celia Johnson, Donald Martiny, ArtSpace, Raleigh, NC | September
Celia Johnson, Donald Martiny, Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT | April

2016

Great & Small: A Holiday Miniature SHow, Diehl Gallery, Jackson, WY
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HUE, Curated by Edie Carpenter, director GreenHill Center for NC Art
GreenHill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC

2015

Pino Pinelli, Donald Martiny, Bram Bogart, ArtA Gallery, Milan, Italy
Is it…Monochrome, Colorfield, or Object?, Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX

2014-15

INTERACT: East Wing Biennial, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (With Bridget Riley, Julie Mehretu, and Felix Gonzalez Torres)
State of the Art | Art of the State, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC

2014

Complementary Colors, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, (with Clint Jukkala, Peter Combe, Alexix Grawell)
China Art Projects, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, China
7 x FARBE PUR | Monochrome Malerei , Galerie Klaus Braun, Stuttgart, Germany (with Beatriz Barral, Christiane Conrad, matthias Lutzeyer, Pino Pinelli, Barbara Uetrecht)
25 Years: Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Cologne, Germany
Two Artists: Donald Martiny and Sherna Teperson, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sidney, Australia

2013

International Art Biennale non-objective, Curated by Roland Orépük, Pont de Claix, France
Fundaments, Galerie Concret, Paris France, (With Alain Biltereyst, Louise Blyton)
Ice Water, Flyswatter: Abstract Painting on Holiday in the Philadelphia Summer, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA, Curated by Douglas Witmer
George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Dallas Art Fair, Galleri Urbane, Marfa+Dallas, Dallas, TX
Raleigh Fine Arts Society’s North Carolina Artists Exhibition, Curated by Bill Dunlapm, Raleigh Fine Arts Society, Raleigh, NC
Unfettered, Curated by Katharine Adkins, Assistnt Curator of Exhibitions, The Nasher Museum of Art
Visual Art Exchange Gallery, Raleigh, NC
Open Source, Curated by Elysia Borowy-Reeder, Executive director, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh
Visual Art Exchange Gallery, Raleigh, NC

2012

Miami Aqua, George Lawson Gallery, Miami, FL
Painting to Sculpture, Curated by John Anderson, Associate Professor of Art, Marlboro Gallery, Prince George Community College, Largo, MD
This and That, Harris Warren Gallery, Wake Forest, NC

2011

New Abstraction, Speakeasy Gallery, Boonton, NJ

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoneix, AZ
One World Trade Ceter, New York, NY
Grahm Gund Family Foundation, Cambridge, MA
Patrick Duffy, Chairman, Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas, NV
Erin Lawlor, Sainte-Marie de Re, France
City of Pont de Claix, France
John Hudson, New York, NY
Mae Gall, Basel, CH
C. Laville, Montreal, QC, Canada
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth TX, The Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA
The Newcomb Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA The Lamborghini Museum, Bologna, Italy.