Ezio Martinelli, Resident Artist Lecture 1969

Ezio Martinelli gives a lecture talking about his sculpture practice. Martinelli believes that sculpture has a psychological connotation that gives it a strong presence; sculpture doesn’t discriminate between being part of an environment or existence as a unique piece. According to Martinelli, this makes sculpture psychologically opposite from all the problems that painters deal with. Martinelli goes further by stating that sculpture is a natural presence of form which makes it not illusionistic, whereas with painting, one is always taking a flat surface and–either by color, projection, or Renaissance perspective–creating an illusion. Martinelli tells the students that sculptors have to work with concepts from engineering, as well as how to work with materials such as polyester, fiber glass, and urethane foam. Martinelli states that as artists, they have to find their own way and try to live within some sense of values. Martinelli ends his lecture by stating that people can no longer say they are just exclusively a sculptor or a painter, for those distinctions have loosened specificity. No one sees these mediums as distinct parameters. Instead, students can simply say that they are artists with interests that are rooted in sound, light, paint, dimension, and so on, freeing them from notions of purity in their approach.