Through the looking Art
The Light is a Flame, acrylic, 100 x 80 cm, 2016. “Inspiration is a myth … inspiration only happens when one pushes oneself with a mixture of intellect, emotion, and very hard work. With art, you have to give everything.” – Hugo Maritz
Hugo Maritz’s prominent and intriguing artworks have been presented in 11 solo exhibitions to date. Though he never formally studied art, he started drawing at a young age. In 1993, well-known art critic and lecturer, Nico van Rensburg, took Maritz under his wing and taught him about composition and painting.
As a child, Maritz spent most of his time drawing comic strip characters, which is where he developed his sense of proportion. “I started painting professionally at age 23, but I’ve been drawing and painting my whole life.”
The main subject throughout most of his works is the human figure, of which he says, “I paint figures because I guess I’m a human, and so I’m mainly interested in people. I find that figures always end up communicating something even more than what was intended, which I find interesting.”
something else that is extremely relevant in his work is colour. Maritz explains that he begins with sharp contrasts in black and white and then refines the composition to include different tones of colour, ranging from dark to light. The final product is a dance of aesthetically pleasing focal points that plays with contrast. “Mostly, I start with a colour and then take it from there, finding other colours that interact with that first colour. Ideally, you want to use both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ colours, as this produces the most vivid pictures, but it also creates the most difficulty.”
Maritz says that most people think only in primary colours, and he almost never uses those, though they might appear on the canvas for first-time viewers. “Besides the fact that each colour almost comes with its own set of rules, the most complicated thing about colours is how they interact. If I surround a grey colour with enough hot sienna hues, you would swear it was blue. what I find more interesting is that when I use certain colours, they end up expressing a feeling.”
studying his artworks, it’s easy to spot references to prominent styles that were brought about by famous artists. But for Maritz, naming an artist’s style is essentially meaningless. His only aim is achieving effects that he finds appealing. He chooses not to give the style he works in a name, and he says that it is ever-changing.
Maritz draws a certain amount of inspiration from some great iconic artists but hasn’t, for the main part, been inspired by too many big names except maybe Modigliani, Klimt, and schiele. “There are a few contemporaries that I have looked at quite a lot and it definitely has played a role – simon Birch, Dave Mckean for example. I often don’t even bother to remember the name – I’m just looking at the pictures.” overall, Maritz is inspired “entirely by the need to improve and I find it to be quite a bottomless well of inspiration”.
on his style, he says, “I have tried many different things with figures, from almost realism to cubism to abstraction and back again – and again many times now. I have included objects and landscapes in the figures. Ultimately, they are all just attempts to improve the result. That is my sole obsession.”
At a glance, his artworks do carry an obscure depth, undoubtedly all brought by his intense fixation on composition. His thoughts on the widely discussed subject of the “deeper meaning” of artworks is just as unconventional and honest as his speculation of style. “People love the myth of the jargon of meaning behind the artist’s work. sometimes I humour them, but honestly, it saddens me a little bit. of course a painting should elicit feelings, but that is for the observer. My aim is not to make you think or feel; it is to make you look.
“Making a good painting is very, very hard. so much so that that is all I’m concerned with trying to do. I wonder sometimes if all the concern with interpretation doesn’t stem from an illusion created by agents to convince the public that if only they understood the deeper, hidden meaning, they would understand why the rather messy-looking canvas is actually worth a fortune.”
For this artist, it always comes down to getting the composition just right. “A simple dot and stripe can be that but not because of what it represents. Does it work? The more you look at art the more you will begin to get this. It’s a looking thing, and from photo-realism to complete abstract the rule is the same: composition.”
on the naming of his artworks, Maritz explains that he gives a hint (often an obscure one) of what the work says to him, but his is by no means the only or correct interpretation. He wants people to see the work for themselves – it may mean something different to everyone, or nothing at all. As he says, “My aim is to make you look.”
Maritz’s next exhibit will be at The Gallery in Riebeek Kasteel as part of the In with The New exhibition launching on 11 August and running until the end of september.
In with The New is an exhibition which will see artists putting their own contemporary spin on classic paintings and sculptures. The line-up of exhibiting artists includes Michaela Rinaldi, Ann Marais, Theo Paul Vorster, Katharine Meeding, and Pascale Chandler, as well as young graduates whose fresh styles provide an interesting alternative perspective on the old masters’ artworks. For this exhibition Maritz has re-imagined Klimt’s The Kiss.
For more info, visit hugomaritz.co.za.
Text: Monique Vanderlinden Images © Hugo Maritz