Arturo Martini was born on 11th August 1889, in Treviso, a city in the northern Italian region of Veneto. As a teenager, he dropped out of school to become an apprentice to a goldsmith. He later left to work in a ceramic workshop where he was taught the basics of modeling and glazing terracotta. In 1906, he continued his studies with the sculptor Antonio Carlini and in 1908 he went to the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in Venice. Here he met the artist Urbano Nono and a group of neo-impressionist artists from Burano, the main member being Gino Rossi. In 1909, he traveled to Munich to continue his studies there with the German classical sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. Hildebrand’s academic sculptures did not appeal much to him, but he was deeply impressed by his ideas about the nature and structure of sculptural thinking.

Martini’s oeuvre can be divided into clearly distinct phases where each phase has a different historical frame of reference. At one time, it is the art of the Hittites that inspires and challenges him, the next it is Hellenistic sculpture, Etruscan sculpture, Roman portraits, or the art of the Baroque. Martini recognizes his indebtedness to art history and never leaves the framework of the tradition of sculpture, but experiments freely within the confines of this area. In Martini's early works, the influence of his stay in Germany is mainly echoed, and in particular the experiments of the Jugendstil. Later Martini develops an angular, emotionally charged expressionist style. Throughout his career, he continued to experiment and search for other, new forms for his sculpture. The element of surprise is a guiding principle for him.

In 1921, Martini came into contact with the magazine Valori Plastici which advocated a return to classical principles. Martini's work became more naturalistic in character during this period. He is the only sculptor to participate in the exhibition of the group of artists involved with the magazine in Berlin that same year. His works from this period show a desire to reduce the representation to elementary forms such as the cylinder and the sphere. In the 1930s, Martini made several works of a propagandistic nature commissioned by the fascist government of Mussolini, such as some reliefs for the Palace of Justice in Milan. In contrast to the large monumental works on commission, he also started work on a series of small terracotta and bronze figures in the 1930s and 1940s.

The last years of Martini's life were filled with concern at what he saw as "the defeat of his sculpture." Disillusioned by the war and the fascist regime, he writes a bitter whose title - La scultura, lingua morta - shows the artistic ‘drama’ of his disappointment with the limitations of sculpture. Martini stood outside the major modernist movements and their ideas about the essence of art. Nevertheless, his work is permeated with a desire for modernity.

Works by Martini can be found in a number of instates and museums including Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Ca Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice; La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Civic Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art, Turin and MIC Faenza International Museum of Ceramics.

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