Josep Anton Martí Teixidor

JOSEP ANTON MARTÍ TEIXIDOR (Barcelona, 1930).
"Dresden", 1980.
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 280 x 500 cm.

The first pictorial work that Martí considers serious is from 1950, La Annunciatta a la Virgen María. Later, in 1953, he joined the Cercle de Sant Lluc and the FAD. The premature death of his brother Robert will deeply mark the life of the family and the young Martí; due to this fact his mother becomes interested in esotericism and astrology, turning the family home into a meeting point of the Barcelonian occultist environment. His interest in esotericism and alchemy would accompany Martí throughout his life, and was reflected in his work. He wins the first prize in the Wagnerian Plastic Arts competition of 1955, awarded by the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany, with a 100 F entitled Parsifal and Kundry. In 1957 he established himself as a goldsmith and studied technical procedures at La Llotja, especially fresco painting, where he met Carlos Mensa. In 1958 he meets Odina Capo, who will be his first wife. In 1960 he closes the goldsmith workshop and moves to Paris, where his daughter Odina is born in 1963 and adopts the acronym V.I.T.T.R.I.O.L. in reference to alchemy. He returned to Barcelona in 1967, reopened his goldsmith's workshop, and in 1972 he divorced his wife. A period of intense artistic activity begins. In 1973 he exhibits at the Àgora gallery in Sitges and at the Taller de Picasso gallery in Barcelona, la guerra dels onze dies, an exhibition in which he satirizes official painting, abstract art, minimalism and arte-povera. In 1974 he exhibits the collection El nostre Barça, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the club, also at the Taller de Picasso gallery. He gives the lectures Cinquanta hores d'art català in Balaguer and Art i Alquímia at the University of Barcelona. In 1976 he founded the group Desperta Ferro, and exhibited at the TRECE gallery. The group gained notoriety with the publication of its manifesto and its appearance on television, but all its members left the group, leaving Martí alone. Between 1979 and 1980 he painted Dresden, a 500×280 cm. painting, currently exhibited at the MEAM. In 2004 he received several private commissions and exhibited in Marbella, in the Sammer Gallery. That same year, inspired by the ideas that he and Lara Látiris have about painting and art, and as a praxis of the Posterminal Painting, he begins the series of large format oil paintings Seda y Arpillera, and in 2007 he begins to write the novel Las Almas Putas, with the same theme. In 2014 Lara Látiris passed away and she definitively hung up her brushes, leaving the series Seda y Arpillera unfinished. He finished Las Almas Putas in 2.015. In 2016 he writes Cuentos Oscuros and La Fama Fraternitatis, the manifesto of the Post-Terminal Painting, where he exposes the ideas about art that he had with Lara Látiris, claiming the need for an Adult and Responsible art. That same year he begins to write his memoirs, Our Biography. A subtlety of destiny. Lara Látiris and I. Sequences and consequences, ending them in 2009.