As a child, Viola Morton used to spend her school holidays at the South Australian farmhouse where her eccentric cousin, Robert Martiensen, lived.
“Bob’s mum would pick me up from the train station and we would have lots of fun,” Morton says. “But we tended to get him annoyed so he’d disappear and didn’t want to play with us.
“He was a very inward person and didn’t tolerate us younger cousins.”
Martiensen remained at the Mount Gambier property following the death of his mother. It’s then, Morton believes, that he must have started painting.
“I went up and saw him a couple of times and the house was full of art,” Morton says. “No one knew anything about it, not even members of his family.
“It meant nothing to me.”
In 2007, Martiensen was found dead in his derelict farmhouse. After his death, Elizabeth Arthur, a psychotherapist and art valuer located in Hamilton in south-west Victoria, received an urgent phone call to her medical clinic.
The call was from an Elders auctioneer in South Australia, who had been tasked with selling off Martiensen’s estate. He felt it required urgent analysis by an experienced art aficionado.
“I’ve been an art valuer for 30 years,” Arthur says. “The gentleman on the line said when he had cleared out this house he found all these paintings. And I mean thousands of paintings.
“The family had said they were all rubbish and to get rid of them. To his great credit he told me ‘I don’t think they’re rubbish’.”
Arthur dropped everything and made her way across the border to see what the auctioneer had found.
“I literally could not speak when I walked into that (warehouse),” Arthur says. “There was a blaze of colour, with brilliant works, and all I said to the auctioneer was: this is not rubbish, this is very special indeed.
“It took my breath away.”
‘A mission to create for himself’
The reclusive maths teacher was, unbeknown to those closest to him, an extraordinary artist. Martiensen created just over 7,000 pieces in his lifetime including wooden sculptures and visual works painted on everything from curtain blinds to canvases to sandpaper. His works date back to the late 1980s, with his final work dated in 2007 – only days before his death.
Arthur describes Martiensen’s work as abstract and inspired by the great modernist artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“He was totally untrained, he had no connection to the art world, he was not painting for profit, he was painting in secret,” Arthur says.
“It is hard to describe his work because within the thousands of paintings there are so many different styles. And they cover all spectrum of interests – social issues, Aboriginal issues, art, culture and music.
“He was a quiet man, so I believe he was expressing in art what he was feeling inside.”
For the first time in Australia, more than 100 of Martiensen’s major works are on display at the Hamilton Gallery as part of an exhibition titled The Secret. It closes on Sunday.
Delving deep into the life and art of this mysterious man, the exhibition offers a glimpse into Martiensen’s story and the awe-inspiring skills of this outsider artist.
The Hamilton Gallery director, Joshua White, says thousands of people have come through the gallery to see the exhibition, with a 20% increase in attendance from young people.
“It’s really resonated with the younger people,” White says. “I think because he’s an outsider artist, bound by no rules, it’s accessible to youth and a really interesting story.
“It’s a sad story in some ways and in another way very empowering. Someone who wanted to create pure art for themselves and wasn’t impacted by art school or the art market or commercial galleries, but was in search of his own journey and his own artwork.
“People look for validation in creativity or in their job or in relationships. Whereas he was just on a mission to create for himself.”
Morton says she is thrilled to have been able to see her cousin’s works on display.
“I’d only seen a dozen pieces when he had shown me what he’d been doing and pulled out a few canvases, but I didn’t realise he had what he had,” she says. “It was just a revelation to go.”
It took several years for Arthur to examine Martiensen’s collection. She eventually published a book about him, which has now sold out and is being reprinted.
Arthur says she hopes the exhibition will travel the country, and the collection itself will remain in an institution to be studied and accessed constantly.
“It does worry me he might be upset at the publicity because he was such a secret person,” she says. “But those who knew him say he would probably be pleased as long as he didn’t have anything to do with it.
“The whole point is to honour the man, this extraordinary man.”
