Karel Martens: Counterprint

Throughout his career as a designer, Karel Martens has made artistic (uncommissioned) work. In his early days he used sheets of paper, cut to make reliefs. Then he began to make prints from Meccano, metal plates and washers, and other found objects. These prints were made in very small numbers, or were perhaps one-offs. They were studies in form and colour, done as experiments or intended as gifts to friends. The work was very much in the Dutch tradition of experimental printing (the artist H.N.Werkman is the great exemplar here). But Martens kept this work largely apart from his graphic design work. He has occasionally shown it in exhibitions, and some pieces were published in the book Karel Martens: printed matter / drukwerk.

This is the first publication devoted to Martens’s prints. It is made in association with the printer Lecturis, in Eindhoven, and is produced to the highest quality. Bound in Chinese/Japanese fashion, like the first Martens book, it has a strong quality as an object. The main text in the book is an essay by the English designer Paul Elliman: ‘The world as a printing surface’. Dutch critic and teacher Carel Kuitenbrouwer provides a short introduction. The book is designed by Hans Gremmen, under the supervision of Karel Martens, at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem.