The
origins of intaglio printmaking (etching and engraving) in
Europe
go back to the Middle Ages. Decorative engraving on metal had been known for
millennia to add beauty to everything from suits of armor to buttons, but it was
time consuming. Around the 13th century, a wax resin coating was developed that
could be thinly spread on steel, copper or brass. The craftsman could easily
draw upon this acid resistant layer and expose the metal underneath. The whole
would then be submerged in acid, which quickly did the work of an engraver
eating through the exposed metal plate. This new technique was known as etching.
The jump from engraving and etching on a metal plate, to inking it and printing
it on paper was just a matter of time. The 14th century print sellers (mostly of
Holy cards) were common at the great regional fairs. This was truly the
beginning of art for the masses. However, it was not until Renaissance masters
Andrea Mantegna and Albrecht Durer took it as a serious art technique that the
possibilities of printmaking as art in its own right were discovered. Through
the Renaissance and Baroque period and even later, printmaking was primarily
used as a medium for artists to reproduce their most famous paintings for the
mass market. The prints shown here were created using essentially the same
classic printmaking techniques used by Rembrandt.
Martinez
etched or engraved the plate, then personally inked and printed each impression
using a hand-operated press. Fine imported papers were used to print each
edition.
Martinez's editions are very small, usually about 50 prints per plate. Because they are
hand wiped, every run through the press alters the plate slightly and each
impression is unique. Standards are exacting and on average one in five prints
are canceled.
Drawing
The
earliest drawings by
Martinez
were saved by the artist's mother and show an eight-year-old boy struggling to
capture the things of his world. Cowboys, soldiers, and Indians are drawn with a
stiff but extremely detailed technique. Stitches, buttons, and buckles are
portrayed with obsessive completeness, as if the more technical details recorded
the more real (not realistic) they would become. This is drawing as
"conjuring". There could have been a similar motivation behind the
30,000-year-old drawings in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira. As an art student
in his early twenties, Martinez fell under the spell of the line, or the 'edge'
of things, the inherent abstraction of drawings. Skillful paintings in the right
light can easily fool the eye. Drawings, no matter how realistic, cannot. To
admire a drawing is to, consciously or unconsciously, admire the means by which
it was done. Today, Martinez's drawing technique is based on renaissance and
baroque masters. When using toned paper the artist not only gets darker (black
pencil on white paper) but lighter as well (pencil plus white chalk). This
enables him to deal with tonalities similar to those used in his paintings.
Drawing also helps the artist think out loud when he is experimenting with light
or exploring new ideas. Several drawings here have graph lines, showing that
they were studies eventually enlarged for use in paintings.
