Eddie Martinez

Eddie Martinez was born in 1977 at Groton Naval Base, Connecticut, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He briefly attended the Art Institute of Boston without completing a formal degree, a trajectory that left his practice self-directed and resistant to academic convention from the outset. Working primarily as a painter and sculptor, Martinez has built a body of work that fuses abstraction with cartoon-derived figuration, layering oil, spray paint, enamel, silkscreen ink, and collaged canvas into surfaces that feel simultaneously spontaneous and densely considered. The large-scale painting When We Were In Good Hands (2016–2017), executed in oil, spray paint, enamel, collaged canvas, and silkscreen ink on canvas at 72 by 108 inches, stands as a defining example of this synthesis — a work in which hybrid materials and accumulated mark-making expand the possibilities of what a painted surface can hold.

Martinez's exhibition record spans institutional and commercial contexts across multiple continents. Early New York presentations at The Drawing Center in 2017 and The Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2018 were followed by solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, both in 2019. The years since have brought solo shows at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles — Green Thumb in 2021 and Pigeon Sweat in 2022 — alongside presentations at LOYAL in Stockholm, Space K Gallery in Seoul, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, where Buflies opened in 2024. That same year, Wavelengths opened at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York, and You think that you know but you know that you don't opened at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin. Also in 2024, Martinez's project Nomader was presented at the Pavilion of the Republic of San Marino at the 60th Venice Biennale — a significant marker of international recognition. Looking ahead, Purple Flopper is scheduled at Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris in 2026, and an exhibition at Gallery Met, The Metropolitan Opera in New York, opens in September 2025 and continues through 2026.

Martinez is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, and Timothy Taylor in London. His work enters major permanent collections including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, The Morgan Library & Museum, the RISD Museum, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. In 2008 he held a residency at Bauernmarkt, Lenikus Collection, in Vienna, and in 2007 received First Place for Best Group Show in a Commercial Gallery from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Coverage in publications including T Magazine and ArtCritic has traced the sustained momentum of a practice that continues to expand in both scale and reach.