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Helen
Martins: A South African Gaudi
By
Niki Collins-Queen
It
was something of a shock to see Aunt Helen's
leap to fame after her suicide in 1975,
and to see the excitement in art circles
over her work.
Helen
Martins was born in South Africa in 1897
and spent most of her 78 years in the
small village of Nieu Bethesda in the
Cape's Great Karroo Desert. She was
not acknowledged as an artist in her lifetime.
She didn't begin her work until she
was 50 years old and she didn't think
of herself as an artist.
Family,
friends and neighbors thought she was
an “incorrigible eccentric”
or worse. Yet today she is acclaimed as
a genius. The town has bought her house
and works and there is a play and a film
on her life. Her achievement is compared
to Antonio Gaudi's fantastic architecture
in Barcelona and to Simon Rodes' Watts
Towers.
Although
I never met my great Aunt Helen, I've
heard about her as long as I can remember.
The overwhelming sentiment of the family
was exasperation, as when grandmother
discovered that money sent her sister
for food and clothes went to material
to make more of those “ghastly statues.”
She
had been a grade school teacher. She married
a young diplomat named Pienaar and traveled
through Europe and the US with him for
a year before their marriage broke apart.
Returning to her “beloved Karoo,”
after her mother's death, she nursed
her ailing, bigoted father until he died.
Then she painted his room black and engraved
“The Lion's Den” on the
step.
After
that Helen lived in solitude simply to
create. Tapping an inner stream of creative
vision, without external stimulation from
conventional art and cultural centers,
her genius “flowered undaunted by
environment.” She held no exhibitions,
rarely admitted visitors into her sanctuary,
and was, in fact, astonished and embarrassed
when anyone showed an interest in her
work. Since she did not go to church and
had little interest in earthly comforts,
the strictly Calvinist community she lived
in considered her “ungodly,”
although the work is obviously that of
a deeply religious person.
What
she did was apply cement plaster to wire
from which she then painted or covered
with colored glass. In her garden she
constructed more than 200 camels, owls,
peacocks, Bushmen, Biblical characters,
and Buddhas.
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