The Berkshire Eagle
Art Review-1979
Winifred Bell
I was impressed with Irena Martens’ relief sculpture last year; this year I am ecstatic.
Her total production since last summer consists of just five works: each more imaginative than the one before. Each is a life size female figure cut from smoothly finished pieces of plywood that fit together like clothing patterns. Martens’ head is obviously filled with an encyclopedia of art history. She plucks imagery from myriad sources and adapts it to her own unique needs.
In one work, “Beauty and the Beast,” vivid multi-red patterns with gold overlays in the sleek gown (which could have been created by the Art Nouveau painter
Gustav Klimt) are combined with an Egyptian style collar and headdress .The mournful face with huge eyes was obviously inspired by a late Egyptian –early roman mummy case portrait. The lady’s forehead is adorned with a floer, and one of her cast human hands holds a chain to which an animated dog is attached. He is painted flatly in bright semi gloss red and his single front view eye in his profile face has its traditions in ancient Egypt and 20th Century Picasso.
Each of martens’ pieces in this exhibition is different in mood. “Juggler” has a pet cat draped around her shoulders 
which has whimsically caught one of the flying balls in its mouth. The cat glances surreptitiously at his it’s mistress, whose face is tense with concentration.
“Roswitha” is a gentle hooded lady whose dog licks her fingers.
Like all of the works in this show, she was executed with precision and numerous small, surprise details.
Martens’ work combines the fascination of fairy tales with intricate imagery and meticulous craftsmanship. Pure Delight !
The Berkshire Eagle
Lisa Vossbergh August 1977
“Of Dolls and Docents”
Downstairs, Irena Martens, who calls herself the Doll Artist, has an unusual exhibit of three -dimensional dolls, ranging from life-size to hugging size. But it’s only the size that would make any of these controversial figures huggable.
Helen Davis said some people thought these figures were frivolous. They appear to be anything but that. There is a certain melodramatic quality in their austere shapes, the dramatic materials accented with dime-store gewgaws. “The show is one of contrasts and opposites, in the imagery and in the materials, showing the duality of man,” says Mrs. Davis.
The big dolls adorn the walls and hang like religious figures. The masklike faces are based on different cultures and the flat bodies contrast with realistically shaped hands and feet.
One male figure has a jigsaw-puzzle wooden body, his early Renaissance face surrounded by wooden antlers. Religious and occult symbols such as the Star of David and an eye, adorn his chest. haunting eyes expressing determination, his hand holding a black bird; he sees evil and exposes it, hias wisdom camouflaged behind his flashy array.
The artist was born in Germany and later moved to Italy. German influences are most evident in this doll, reflecting the role of the cabaret presenting the truth in disguised songs.
Other dolls in the collection reflect African, Coptic Christian and 
Mesopotamian cultures.
Ms. Marten’s smaller ceramic dolls are plain of set with stones, wood and stuffed cloth. One cloth doll with a painted face and lace skirt comes closest to what one thinks of as a “doll”.
In other works, the artists ceramic and painted pictures in odd roundish shapes depict scenes with delightful aspects of flora and fauna intermingled with unpleasant, ugly sights.
This show will run to mid-September and is worth seeing, for pleasure and its unusual quality.
The Berkshire Eagle
8-19-77
Art review – Winifred Bell
“Surrealism and ceramics”
Irena Martens deals in the stylized human form executed in wood and embellished with oval shaped white plaster faces that come straight out of the early Italian Renaissance.
These life-size figures are as rigid as architectural columns. Their frontal attitudes are a composite of the beginnings of many cultural periods; both sophisticated and primitive. They are finished with mystic symbols, meticulously and skillfully achieved.
For example, “Lady in Armor” is covered in neatly scalloped sheets of bronze, mermaid fashion. A basket mask is hinged onto her expressionless pale face and connected to it are a number of raffia ribbons or strings. At the end of each is a tiny graceful bronze hand which rests comfortably somewhere on her metal chest. The hands and their connections form a looping decorative pattern which the lady wears like jewelry.
In many of Marten’s works,, the wood armature is composed of curved pieces that fit together as a jigsaw puzzle and are carefully sanded so that the natural grain and color is apparent. “Lady of Feathers” reminds me of the magnificent capes the Hawaiians created for their royalty, in which they turned the intricate patterns found in plumage into beautiful geometric arrangements.
In view of Marten’s biographical information – she was born in Germany and studied throughout Europe- it is not likely that our most western state had an influence; nevertheless, she arrived at similar imagery.
Martens changes her idiom somewhat in the figure titled “Cabaret.” A small-headed, huge shouldered man with deep set dark eyes holds a black crow in his hand. He is clothed almost entirely in shimmering buttons. He forbodes evil or perhaps he is meant to combat it.
There are also several smaller pieces on display. “Doll Mother” with commercial baby bottle nipples in the correct anatomical locations and “The Leer” with an unbelievable smile are particularly interesting.
