Stelio M. Martini was born in Ancona in 1934 from a Napolitan father and died in Caivano (Naples) in 2016. During the years 1956-58 he composed a first nucleus of poems which were later to be published on “Détournement” and on “Diario”. In 1959 and 1960 he wrote the poems later collected in “Tourbillon” (Guanda, Parma 1966). In 1961-62 he composed “Schemi” (Schemes - Documento Sud, Naples 1966) and with Mario Diacono and Emilio Villa the three issues of “Quaderno” which will continue in Rome with the magazine “Ex”. A small anthology of his poems is published on “Phantomas-Italie” n° 45-49 (Brussels 1963). In 1963 the novel “Neurosentimental, later republished in 1983 (Morra, Napoli). In 1972 he wrote “Formulazioni non-A”, “Continuazione A-Z” with Luciano Caruso (Continuum, Naples 1973) “Parologismata” (Visual Art Center, Naples 1975). Then a whole series of pieces on “Poiorama” and the magazine “Uomini e Idee (Men and ideas). Moreover Martini has begun in 1970 a critical revisiting of some Italian authors of the twentieth centuries, with essays on Edoardo Cacciatore, Aldo Capitini, Emilio Villa, Vincenzo Muggione and with Luciano Caruso the two important volumes where he collects the “Tavole parolibere futuriste” (Futurist Freeword Tables - Liguori, Naples 1974-1977).

In 1963 Stelio M. Martini ‘constructs’ “Neurosentimental”, a novel which by the collage technique he carries out a very new fictional strategy shortcircuiting both prose and images in a forest of iconoverbal juxtaposition : a chaotic congealed and paged up film, an unheard-of example of departure from the grammar of visual writing to its syntax, a real and proper visual novel.

The year before Martini had ‘constructed’ “Schemi” where, particularly in the section “L’impassibile naufrago” (The impassive outcast) he carries out an internal segmentation of the word, thus reduced to almost asemantic fragments. From 1964 onwards Martini has been proceeding creating a whole series of collages of which here we provide some examples: “Scrittura e/o paesaggio” (Writing and/or landscape –1982): a letter-comet plunging onto the terrestrial horizon. “Immagine-parola” (Image-Word – 1987), an ironic ‘flight into Egypt’ on a speeding car. Another “Image-word “, 1987 with the caption “Les pas toujours récommencés” echoing the well-known line from Valery’s “Cimetière Marin”: “La mer, la mer toujours récommencée”. The two “Lettere morte” (Dead Letters) which could be interpreted as extremely refined still life pictures composed in collage.