ESPANTANGO | Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Anton Martineau (Dutch artist and poet) 1926 -
print: Gertjan Forrer
Tango, 1998
lithograph
64 x 50 cm. 
NEDERLANDS STEENDRUKMUSEUM Valkenswaard, The Netherlands

Anton Pieter Johan Martineau is a versatile artist and poet. He works as a painter, draftsman, printmaker and sculptor in figurative style, and later also as a teacher.

As a painter, he claims to be self-taught. Nevertheless, he attended the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where he studied on the advertising and photography department, with among others Paul Schuitema. According to data from the RKD in 1946 he als studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam.

Martineau traveled several times to France, where he stayed in Paris, and where he had contact with the generation of the Fifties. In the summer of 1948, he stayed with Lucebert near Paris.

Favourite subjects are: humans, dancing couples, eroticism, drama of love and death, joy and fear, absurd portraits and still lifes.

The main graphic technique in his work is the lithography. In his characteristic smooth and whimsical drawing style originated many colourful prints in which the theme gender plays a role. Sometimes texts included in the image. The lithographs are manufactured in several print runs and show a faithful reproduction of his spontaneous handwritingthe way you can see in his collages and mixed media on paper. The 'Tango' and 'The Painter and his Model, are his recurring topics.