Kenneth Martin
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Martin was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 painter and sculptor who along with his wife Mary Martin
Mary Martin (Artist)
Mary Adela Martin was a British sculptor best known for her work with her husband Kenneth Martin....

 and Victor Pasmore
Victor Pasmore
Edwin John Victor Pasmore was a British artist and architect. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.-Biography:...

 was a leading figure in the revival of Constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

 in Britain and America in the 1940s.

After part time study at Sheffield School of Art Martin won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

 in 1929 -32 where he met Mary Balmford (1907-1969). The pair married. In the 1930s he painted in a naturalistic style and was associated with the Euston Road School
Euston Road School
The Euston Road School was a group of English painters, active in London between 1937 and 1939.William Coldstream, Victor Pasmore, Claude Rogers, Maurice Field and Graham Bell set up a School of Drawing and Painting in Euston Road in 1937; other associated artists included Lawrence Gowing, Tom...

 and with Pasmore was a member of the London Group
London Group
The London Group is an artists' exhibiting society based in London, England, founded in 1913, when the Camden Town Group came together with the English Vorticists and other independent artists to challenge the domination of the Royal Academy, which had become unadventurous and conservative....

. During the 1940s Martin’s work began to emphasise elements of structure and design until 1948-9 when following Pasmore’s lead he became purely abstract. “The moment I became a purely abstract artist I began to realise what I had been missing....That I’d really missed the whole of the modern movement’’. Martin's first constructions appeared in 1951 and he became known for his mobile
Mobile (sculpture)
A mobile is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, so that the rods remain more or less horizontal...

 works and kinetic sculpture.

Martin’s particular interest became Geometric abstraction. Kenneth and Mary Martin along with Pasmore exhibited together in a number of group exhibitions during the 1950s including This Is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow
This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.-History:...

. Kenneth and Mary had a joint exhibition at the I.C.A.
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...

 in 1960.

In the 1960s Kenneth Martin ran a course at Barry summer school and recruited his ex-student Peter Lowe
Peter Lowe
Peter Lowe is a British Constructivism artist. He was born in London at Victoria Park, Hackney. He studied at Goldsmiths' College 1954–60 where he was taught by Mary and Kenneth Martin. Lowe's work is rational, abstract and geometric. In 1960 he constructed and exhibited his first geometric...

 as a teaching assistant.

There is a stainless steel fountain by Kenneth Martin at Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....

 Day College in South London, and an aluminium sculpture at the Department of Engineering at Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

.

An exhibition of the work of Kenneth and Mary Martin was mounted at the Tate St Ives in 2007 .
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