Background

Eddie Martinez was born in 1977 in Groton, Connecticut, United States. He spent his earliest years in Brooklyn, but grew up all over the country, in states that include Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, and California.

Education

Martinez did one year of art school at the Art Institute of Boston, but he found he couldn’t finish. After that, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, without earning his degree.

Career

Eddie Martinez’s artistic career arguably began during the house painting jobs of his youth, during which he preferred doodling to the task at hand.

Having spent his adolescent years making graffiti, Martinez creates paintings on canvas that retain the rough, expressionistic lines and bold colors of street art. Martinez's work joins together painting and drawing, abstraction and representation in non-traditional ways. He also produces large and small-scale abstract sculpture, made mostly from found materials such as rubber hoses, styrofoam, cardboard, and metal scraps sourced from wherever the artist is working at the time.

Martinez's solo museum exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Michigan (2019). The Bronx Museum, New York (2018), The Drawing Center, New York (2017) and The Davis Museum at Wellesley College, MA (2017). He has also had solo exhibitions at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2014); Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); Half Gallery, New York (2014); and Journal Gallery, New York (2013). His work has also been exhibited in various group exhibitions at The Saatchi Gallery, London (2013) and Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011). Additionally, Martinez’s work has been featured in Modern Painters, ARTINFO, The New York Times, ArtReview, The Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America.

Achievements

• Martinez is now internationally renowned as an artist and his works are exhibited all around the world. He was awarded First Place, Best Group Show in a Commercial Gallery for the Boston-area, by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Awards in 2007.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Skullscape

    2010

  • Bloopy Plant

    2010

  • American Native #4

    2012

  • The Grass Is Never Greener

    2009

  • Time Assasin

  • Future Modern

    2012

  • The Entertainer

    2010

  • Bouquet For A Lonely Clown

    2010

  • Untitled

    2010

  • Owl With Still Life

    2010

  • Untitled (bulle plus carrée)

    2009

  • Against The Wind

    2009

  • Against The Wind

    2009

  • Against The Wind

    2009

  • Untitled

    2015

  • Open Life

    2016

  • Untitled

    2016

  • Brussels Mussels

    2016

  • Blue Tide

    2016

  • Hat Closet

    2016

  • Mini Fresh Direct

    2016

Views

Imbued with a sense of personal iconography, Martinez's practice often combines signature figurative elements, such as bug-eyed humans and eclectic headgear with gestural, abstract blocks of color. Energetic and raw, his paintings employ an aggressive use of color and texture with various combinations of oil, enamel, spray paint and collage elements on canvas.

Connections

There is no information on whether Eddie Martinez is married or has any children.

References

• Eddie Martinez: Sculptures
  2016