Donald Martiny

Donald Martiny (born 1953) is an American visual artist, known for sculptural paintings. His works are related to both action painting and abstract expressionism. He lives in Connecticut.

Life Donald Martiny was born in 1953, in Schenectady, New York.

In 2015 Martiny received a scholarship as an artist-in-residence of the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts in New Berlin, New York, and was represented in the annual exhibition of the artists there. Also in 2015, Martiny was invited to produce two large works for the One World Trade Center, which are permanently exhibited there. Martiny has lectured at Cornell University and at the Ackland Art Museum. There, in 2016, he conducted a public discussion on the painter Hans Hoffmann in the context of an exhibition of his works.

Work In an interview, Martiny has been called a gestural abstractionist. This term refers to a method of how the painter applies color to an object: "The idea was that the artist would physically act out his inner impulses, and that something of his emotion or state of mind would be read by the viewer in the resulting paint marks." (Tate Galleries) This technique is also known as Action painting.

Martiny describes his work as follows: "My paintings are actual authentic gestures. These brushstrokes are very much me and I want to be present in the works as honestly and authentically as I can be. They are a record of my physicality at a specific point in time."

Audio 2015: A Chapel Hill Artist Paints His Way Into The World Trade Center

Collections Art collection of the One World Trade Center, New York City, United States Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, United States

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions 2014: Donald Martiny: Freeing the Gesture, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, United States 2016: Donald Martiny, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States 2017: Donald Martiny New Works: The River Series, Diehl Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming, United States 2018: Donald Martiny: Pinselstriche, Galerie Klaus Braun, Stuttgart, Germany 2019: Donald Martiny: Freeing the Gesture, Historic City Hall Arts and Cultural Center, 1001 Ryan St., Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States 2019: Donald Martiny: Praxis and Poesta, Diehl Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming, United States

Group exhibitions 2013: Ice Water Flyswatter, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States 2015: State of the Art – Art of the State, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, United States 2015: Interact: Deconstructing Spectatorship: East Wing Biennial, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England 2016: Great & Small: A Holiday Miniature Show, Diehl Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming, United States 2016: 60 Americans, MakeShift Museum, Los Angeles, California, United States 2016: It’s All About the Hue, GreenHill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, North Carolina, United States 2017: The Enduring Reasons Why: Celebrating 25, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States 2017: Dialectical Praxis – Celia Johnson & Donald Martiny, Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, United States 2017: State of the Art – Art of the State, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, United States 2020: 2020 Front Burner: Highlights in Contemporary North Carolina Painting, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States 2021: Color Theory, Bentley Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona, United States

Public art 2015: Two works in the One World Trade Center: Lenape (named after the Indian Tribe Lenape which used to populate large parts of today's states New York and New Jersey) and Unami (named after the now extinct language of Lenapes). 2019: Hugin + Munin (named as a reference to Huginn and Muninn in the Frost Tower Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas