Le livre des livres, 1970

Étienne Martin  

Born on February 4, 1913 in Loriol in the Drôme, Étienne Martin studied from 1929 to 1933 at the National School of Fine Arts in Lyon, where he met Jean Bertholle in 1929. In 1930 he met Marcel Michaud. He came to Paris in 1934, working in Charles Malfray's studio at the Académie Ranson where he became friends with the painters Roger Bissière, Jean Le Moal, Alfred Manessier, Zelman, Véra Pagava and the sculptor François Stahly. He was with them part of the Témoignage group, led in Lyon by Marcel Michaud from 1936, which exhibited in Paris in 1938 and 1939.

Mobilized, Étienne Martin was a prisoner in Germany and released in 1941. He stayed in Boulogne in 1942 with Stahly and Zelman in the community led by the architect Bernard Zehrfuss then in 1943-1944 in Dieulefit (Drôme) where he became friends with the writer Henri-Pierre Roché. He then moved to Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy. Back in Paris in 1947 he lived with Roché, met Brancusi and Gurdjieff, whose movement he frequented for ten years, practicing spiritual exercises, with reference to the Orient and Taoism.

In 1954 Étienne Martin began the series of Residences which made him famous and in 1966 received the Grand Prix for sculpture at the 33rd Venice Biennale. He was a professor from 1968 to 1983 at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris for monumental sculpture. He was elected in 1971 to the Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1984 an exhibition of all of his Residences was presented at the Center Pompidou in Paris. An exhibition was dedicated to him in 1996 at the Coubertin Foundation (Saint-Rémy lès Chevreuse, Yvelines). Again, in 2010 (June to September), an exhibition was presented at the Center Pompidou1, a tribute paid to the artist through the presentation of a set of fifteen sculptures, drawings, personal notebooks and photographs from his studio. It was then shown in Vannes at the Musée de la Cohue (June 2011 - September 2011) as part of the “Centre Georges Pompidou hors-les-murs" program. In 2011 (October 2011 to January 2012), the first retrospective of the artist is presented through an exhibition is presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon.

His sculptures have great strength thanks to the inspired use of voids that delimit volumes.