P R I NT S N I C O L A A S M A R IT Z
P R I NT S An album of selected digital works made between 2011 - 2018
NICOLAAS MARITZ Nemesia*Press_online DARLING 2018
CONTENTS Introduction Black and white ‘lino prints’ Colour ‘lino prints’ Biography
INTRODUCTION Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it. Reinhold Niebuhr But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland. Anselm Kiefer People don't remember each tree in a park but all of us benefit from the trees. And in a way, artists are like trees in a park. Yoko Ono My introduction to lino printing was at home in Pretoria, when my mother hand printed some Matisse-like amoebic designs on cloth, for the upholstery of square angle-iron banquettes. These were produced for the office of my parents’ first architectural practice in the Netherlands Bank Building in Pretoria. This must have been about 1963. Black and white lino prints form the Rorkes Drift Swedish Mission Station in Natal, especially the works of Azaria Mbatha, the
ubiquitous woodcuts of J.H. Pierneef, and playfully rude Walter Battiss silkscreens, were much in evidence on the walls of my family, and on those of my parents’ artistic and architectural circle of friends. There was even a messy lino print lesson during a 1967 school art period. The Education Department printing ink was extremely sticky, and only came in a virulent green, and a ‘provincial works department’ dirty brown. Most unsatisfactory. The sixties were after all the time of the permissive ‘graphic’, the edgy silkscreen and the bold poster. My mother made herself A-line dresses out of very colourful fabric with bold graphic designs from the Pretoria shop of Helen De Leeuw, often screen printed by Kerstin Wasserthal. Everyone loved it. We thought it was so ‘fab’. Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. Gilbert K. Chesterton Lino prints appeal to my sense of definitive edge, line and shape. It has a clarity, a crispness that I appreciate still.
During my high school years in Port Elizabeth I discovered the fascinating lino and woodcut prints of Fred Page and Alexander Podlashuc. The art school of the Technical College at Russell Road had a particularly strong graphics department, which made it’s visual influence felt with numerous exhibitions, and with many prints on the walls of private homes. I was rather keen on prints then. My first solo exhibition in 1976 in Port Elizabeth was of monotypes, lino prints and silk screens. I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in p a ra d is e or judgment. Anselm K i ef e r I still love printmaking. Nowadays I produce a version of lino print which I have named faux lino prints. Though made on computer, they may well appear to be anachronistic, which is a piece of subterfuge I currently like to perpetrate. I fail to see why art made now should necessarily have a ‘modern look’? Nicolaas Maritz Darling 2018
BLACK AND WHITE “LINO PRINTS”
Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced. Hans Hofmann
Cannon Balls, 2013
Dishy Fish, 2013
Black Sun Snake, 2013
Avocado Still Life with Starling, 2012
Kalkrand View (First Version), 2011
Kalkrand View with Bustard with Clouds, 2012
Double Bustard View, 2015
Karoo Rockscape, 2011
Dam with Clouds, 2011
Double Moon Fox Terrier, 2015
Swartland Spinster Sisters, 2014
Rugby Chums, 2015
Mantis Mangoes, 2016
Histamine Head, 2015
Modern Madam, 2014
Inspired Guess, 2015
Sightseeing Tourists, 2015
A Too Long Day, 2016
Pricked Sausage, 2015
Bottled Fury, 2015
Macaroni Monster, 2013
Carved Creature, 2013
Summer Fruit, 2014
Spotted Pears, 2014
Garden Pear, 2013
Mango Bowl, 2013
Lonely Night Pear, 2014
Scientifical Bug, 2014
Kalahari Thorn, 2015
Slangbult Farm, 2016
Italian Vegetables, 2014
French Fruit Tableaux, 2015
West Coast Mermafrodite, 2016
Gulper, 2015
The Last West Coast Lion, 2014
Aesthetical Impasse, 2015
Sacrificial Bull, 2014
Casual Observer, 2014
Inveterate Night Owl, 2016
Cape Designer Type, 2017
Self Portrait with Long Hair, 2017
Gecko Face, 2016
Bi-polar Lizard Maiden, 2016
Fish-brained Inventor, 2016
COLOUR ‘LINO PRINTS’
The lord chisels still, so don't leave your bench for long. Gilbert & George
Egg and Doll Dream, 2013
In the Garden at Night, 2013
Lemon and Snake Beach, 2013
Two Karoo Creatures, 2014
Saucer of Milk, 2012
Canary Morning, 2016
Insect Youth, 2013
Phallic Pearls, 2017
Hornbill Evening, 2013
Two Moon Fontein, 2014
Thabazimbi ThornTree (sketch), 2013
Thabazimbi Afternoon, 2014
Crocodile River Landscape, 2014
Two Moon Farm, 2014
Pink Adder Country, 2014
Two Pink Moon Parties, 2015
Two Moon Bar Fly, 2014
Bushveld Two Moon Red Snake Dream, 2014
Saturday Morning Moons, 2014
Biting the Leguan by it’s Tail, 2014
Pink Fruit Bowl, 2017
Yellow Egg Bowl, 2017
Brave Young Creature, 2017
Middle Aged Creature, 2017
Golden Hills, 2012
Pink Hills, 2012
Blue Hills, 2012
Black Hills, 2012
Red Earth, 2012
Pink Table Two Moon Mountain, 2012
Pink Table Bay, 2012
Pink Sky Table Bay, 2012
Love Bug, 2012
Red Ant, 2012
Self Portrait, 2014
Mayonnaise Malherbe, 2014
Red Trees with Black Bustard, 2014
Red Thorn Trees with Two Moons, 2014
Four Ancestral Spectators, 2014
Two Moon and Third Eye Bird, 2014
Two Ancestral Apparitions, 2014
Five Ancestral Apparitions with Two Moons and Plover, 2014
Pink Anniversary Skull, 2015
Golden Prospects Skull, 2015
Diversion Tactics I, 2014
Diversion Tactics II, 2014
Careful Mask Construction, 2016
Benign Masked Behaviour, 2016
Dispersive Mask, 2016
Playful Masked Behaviour, 2016
Optimistic Youth, 2016
Ancestral Figurine, 2016
Two Jolly Polly’s, 2017
Sixties Child, 2016
Three Pinkish Ancestral Apparitions, 2016
Three Mute Ancestral Apparitions, 2016
Two Energetic Nuclear Apologists, 2016
A Marriage of Convenience, 2016
Three Cultural Observers, 2016
Three Old Friends on A Sunday, 2016
Two Lagoon Lovers, 2015
Pollen Morning, 2016
Double Vision Charlie, 2016
Head, 2016
Self Portrait as a Younger Man, 2016
Cumbersome Creature, 2016
Laurie, 2016
Steven, 2016
Two Fooky Friends, 2015
Two Fookian Creatures, 2015
Two Fooky Figurines, 2015
Mutual Embarrassment, 2015
Bi-polar Lizard Maiden (Light Blue Version), 2016
Bi-polar Lizard Maiden (Red and Green Version), 2016
Tutti Frutti Coloured Personnage, 2016
Fish-brained Inventor (Coloured Version), 2016
Red and Black Portrait, 2016
Green Lizard Face, 2016
Self Portrait with New Haircut, 2015
Twin Purple Ectoplasms, 2015
Two Gardening Friends, 2016
Palsy Portrait, 2016
Two Figures Lost in Their Wigs, 2016
Mutual Congratulators, 2016
Two Obscurantists, 2015
Four Fertility Figures, 2015
Autumnal Garden, 2015
Dandelion Garden, 2015
Whistle as you work, 2016
Fruity Platter, 2017
Lizard Fruits, 2017
Feline Hygiene, 2018
Ceramic Enthusiast I, 2014
Ceramic Enthusiast II, 2014
Ceramic Affair, 2014
Two Bearded Creatures, 2015
Red Roman with Lemon and Knife, 2017
Golden Skull View, 2017
Fish in a Blue Bowl, 2016
Pink Fish on a Yellow Plate, 2016
Twee vars Harders vanaf Velddrif, 2016
Pink and Blue Fishy, 2016
BIOGRAPHY Nicolaas Maritz (born 9 July 1959) is a South African multimedia artist. His artistic roots are deeply embedded in the Southern African landscape. Drawing inspiration from its shapes and colours, its creatures and its sounds, he has, during his long career, created a unique body of work, instantly recognizable by virtue of the idiosyncrasy of his vision and the immediacy of the manner in which it is realized. Curious juxtapositions – of the real and the fantastical, the natural and the artificial, the simple and the complex, the humorous and the sinister – are a defining characteristic of Maritz’s art. Many writers have commented on this aspect of his work, and on the creative friction generated by this interplay of contradictory elements, which extends also to his stylistic usage and artistic aims. In describing his paintings, Hilary Prendini-Toffoli writes, “though deceptively naive, in a retro technique evocative of the ‘30s and ‘40s, these multi-levelled paintings manage at the same time to be both meaningful and decorative.” Maritz was born into an artistic Pretoria family, his father an architect and his mother a ceramic artist. Early influences which
were to inform his work, were derived from his parents, his Namibian grandmother, and two artistic Pretoria aunts. Their architectural designs and drawings, watercolours, graphic work, ceramics and illustrations inspired the young Maritz, and helped to form his precocious artistic sensibility, long before he reached art school at the University of Cape Town in 1978. Maritz is a prolific artist, but seems to possess an almost boundless ability to reinvent his aesthetic approach. He is particularly known for his paintings of the Southern African landscape, especially for his singular portrayals of Table Mountain, but his extensive oeuvre is by no means limited to this genre. It includes a large body of paintings, as well as drawings and prints, with excursions into graphic design, ceramics, sculpture, digital and other media. In recent years his approach has been to re-cycle some of his past works in ‘traditional‘ media, through digital collage and montage techniques, to create contemporary and cryptic fusion forms, featuring digital drawing and manipulation, layered sound, and video.
https://sites.google.com/site/nicolaasmaritzgallery/