Description: For Priska von Martin, the catalyst in life was the desire to capture humanity as form. She tried to delineate artistically what constitutes human existence, including isolation, dysfunctionality, pain, but also harmony, wholeness, and beauty. She captured the essence of human existence in animal figures as well as women's bodies and torsos. Her art was aimed at the corporeal, the visibly physical--injury, dislocation, displacement--as well as the spiritual, the invisible, the intangible--emotions, instincts, conditions. Who was Priska von Martin? What hopes did she place in bequeathing her estate to her native Freiburg, so far away from her place of work in Munich, on the vague chance of being viewed and understood independently? If she was focusing on this (deferred) outside view, why did she scarcely document her oeuvre? Which parts of her life story did she want to leave in the dark? How do we treat the information we have about this artist, who is described as a tactful person?
Review Quotes: "Priska von Martin (3 March 1912 in Freiburg - 11 March 1982 in Munich) can be numbered among those largely-forgotten artists from the post-war period. Her personal situation as the wife of a famous, vastly more successful and also much older artist plays a not inconsiderable role in the matter. Her husband Toni Stadler was considered one of the most important Munich sculptors of the post-war era. She considered him a genius and, for a long time, defined herself through him as his pupil. Although she retained her maiden name as her artist's nom de plume throughout her life, officially and among her circle of friends and acquaintances, she was known as Priska Stadler, Toni Stadler's wife. She cherished her independence as an artist, even if it was not an easy path at times. Whenever she presented her art at exhibitions, she felt it should speak for itself and be viewed as something independent of her personal biography. Indeed, she kept details about her person out of the public domain to a large extent. Having been forgotten for almost thirty years, her work has been attracting renewed interest in recent years as a result of the general reappraisal and re-evaluation of female sculptors. Concomitantly, this has led to a focus on her as an individual. Thus, an examination of her work also requires a closer look at her life story. The first essay on this subject after her death in March 1982 appeared a full thirty-five years later in the catalogue titled Toni Stadler 'I don't find - I search' published in 2017." --The editors