Stelio Maria Martini Biography
Stelio Maria Martini was born in Ancona in 1934. He developed his cultural education in Naples, where he studied with Luigi Castellano and Mario Persico, active in the Neapolitan avant-garde scene in the late 1950s. In 1960 Martini joined the editorial committee of "Documento Sud", and two years later he published Schemi (Naples, Sud-Arte, 1962), a series composed of fourteen "collage poems". Martini used an artistic approach that combined visual and verbal language.
In 1962, together with Mario Diacono and Emilio Villa, Martini founded and directed "Quaderno", a periodical whose editorial activity continued the following year in Rome with the creation of "Ex" by Villa and Diacono. In 1966 Martini met Luciano Caruso, and a long-lasting personal and intellectual partnership was born between the two.
In 1968 Martini, together with Caruso, founded Continuum in Naples. It was a cultural, performative and poetic group of intellectuals whose goal was to achieve the "mirage of the fusion of the arts". In this period Martini also contributed to “Uomini e Idee” and “Ana eccetera”, directed respectively by Corrado Piancastelli and Martino Oberto. In 1973, together with Caruso, Martini founded the magazine “Continuazione AZ” and wrote for “La week of silence”.
From the 80s to the 90s Martini abandoned avant-garde experiences and concentrated on literary criticism and non-fiction. He has published several volumes, including Brief history of the avant-garde (Marano di Napoli, Nuove Edizioni-Longobardi, 1988), Erotic moments of Neapolitan poetry (Naples 1991), Ancient Neapolitan riddles collected by Raffaele Aragona (Naples 1991), and Poems, Calligrams, meters, with 12 drawings by M. Palliggiano and a testimony by L. Pignotti (Naples 1991), all published by the Marotta publishing house. Over the course of his career, Martini held several solo exhibitions, including “Neurosentimental” in Florence in May 1977, “1958-1981: Through the labyrinth of languages and representation to the poet who enters poetry” in Milan in December 1981, “The word of my time: works” at the Palazzo Ducale of Sant'Arpino, Caserta, in May 1998, and “By form of word: Stelio Maria Martini from the years of the avant-garde in Naples to the verbal labyrinths” at the Chapel of Villa Rufolo in Naples in August 2001.
Martini has also participated in numerous collective exhibitions dedicated to “visual poetry” and avant-garde culture, including “Visual Poetry 1963-1988. Five masters: Ugo Carrega, Stelio Maria Martini, Eugenio Miccini, Lamberto Pignotti, Sarenco" in Verona in October 1988 and "Visual poetry and its surroundings (Ultima avant-garde)" in Spoleto in July-September 1995, edited by Enrico Mascelloni and Sarenco .
