Enrique Martinez Celaya

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Enrique Martínez Celaya

Born 9 June 1964
Palos, Cuba
Nationality Cuban American
Field Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Poetry, Writing
Training University of California, Santa Barbara, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, University of California, Berkeley, Cornell University
Influenced by Joseph Beuys, Leon Golub, Herman Melville, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harry Martinson
Awards Anderson Ranch National Artist Award, California Community Foundation Fellowship, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Art Here and Now Award, The Hirsch Grant
Enrique Martínez Celaya working on his Nomad exhibition for Miami Art Museum.
Enrique Martínez Celaya working on his Nomad exhibition for Miami Art Museum.
Boy Raising His Arm. Installed at St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, Ireland, OPEN e v+ a 2007
Boy Raising His Arm. Installed at St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, Ireland, OPEN e v+ a 2007


Enrique Martínez Celaya is a painter, sculptor, photographer, poet, and writer. He is best known for his large paintings and sculpture of startling graphic impact that often focus on isolated body fragments—a head, a hand, an arm. His largely figurative works mine the transient world of time and memory, identity and displacement.

Contents

[edit] Life and art

[edit] Early life and work

Enrique Martínez Celaya’s self-described identity as an exile, his Catholic upbringing, and his aptitude for science have played major roles in his life. Martínez Celaya was born in Palos, Cuba on June 9, 1964. He was uprooted at age eight to live in Spain. Three years later, his family moved to Puerto Rico, where he was apprenticed to an academic painter. He excelled at science, but his painting helped him understand the turmoil in his world.

Martínez Celaya came to the United States in 1982 as a student. He received a BS in applied physics from Cornell University in 1986 and an MS in quantum electronics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. On the brink of completing a doctorate in physics, he ultimately chose art, and earned an MFA with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine with a fellowship.

In addition to painting, Martínez Celaya published poetry, built a laser, and received prizes from the Department of Energy and the National Congress of Science. In 1994, he received recognition and patents for his work at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Electronics Research Laboratory in Berkeley.

[edit] Recent work

Martínez Celaya’s art is largely figurative, focusing on the human body and parts of the body. His body of work has elicited comparisons outside the visual arts to the writings of Paul Celan and José Saramago and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Nomad – For his solo show in 2007 at the Miami Art Museum in Miami, Florida, Celaya created a group of five large-scale, oil-and-wax paintings which explore issues of exile and rootlessness. Partly inspired by the works of Swedish poet and Nobel Prize laureate Harry Martinson, the paintings evoke the dream-like state of suspension in which the exile lives: time passes and yet nothing changes.

Schneebett – Installed at the Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany, in 2004, this large-scale installation—the final stage in the artist’s Beethoven cycle—served as a counterpoint to the musical performances. The project also included booklets for the public written by the artist, performances by the orchestra and a public lecture sponsored by the American Academy in Berlin.

The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston are among the public collections holding works by Enrique Martínez Celaya. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Delray Beach, Florida.

[edit] Books

Martínez Celaya has published and edited several books and essays of fiction, poetry, science, and philosophy. In 1998 he founded Whale and Star, a publishing house whose books are distributed internationally by the University of Nebraska Press. Recent titles include "Martínez Celaya. Early Work" and "XX", a book of lyrics and photographs of the Cowboy Junkies, with watercolors by Enrique Martínez Celaya.

[edit] Awards

In 1998 Martínez Celaya received Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art Here and Now Award, in 2001 the Hirsch Grant, in 2002 the Rosa Blanca Award from the Cuban Community, and in 2004 the Getty Foundation Award. In the summer of 2007 he was given the prestigious Anderson Ranch National Artist Award.

[edit] Teaching

Martínez Celaya was a tenured professor at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate University until his resignation in 2003. He has for many years served as a popular and influential teacher at the well-known Anderson Ranch Arts Center workshop. He is currently a Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska.

[edit] Quotes

"Being ethical away from the world is easier than in the world. I think some people see the path of abstraction as pure, uncompromised, but it could just be avoidance; artists who insist on removing their work from human struggles take a tidy path, which seems especially wasteful for those whose lives are in turmoil and confusion." [1]

"Time is an insurmountable gap only negotiated through memory, remembrance, regret, longing, love. I think we are rarely blessed with the ability to see the present for what it is—all that there is." [2]

[edit] References

  • Celaya, Enrique Martínez, Berlin, Venice Beach, CA, Griffin Contemporary Exhibitions, 1998.
  • Celaya, Enrique Martínez, A Dress and a Dove for Her Marriage of Fire and Four Blankets to Keep Her from Burning, Santa Ana, CA : Daniel Arvizu Gallery, 1996.
  • Martínez Celaya, Enrique, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Paintings from 1994 and 1995, Santa Monica, Calif, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, 1995.
  • Martínez Celaya, Enrique, Enrique Martínez Celaya, The October Cycle, 2000-2002, Lincoln, NE, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden in association with Marquand Books, 2003.
  1. ^ Richard Whittaker (2004), A conversation with Enrique Martínez Celaya: Self and beyond self, works + conversations 
  2. ^ L. Kent Wolgamott (2004), A conversation between L. Kent Wolgamott and Enrique Martínez Celaya, Lincoln Journal Star 
'The End of Tragedy' (detail), oil, graphite, varnish and collage on paper by Enrique Martinez Celaya, 1995, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu
'The End of Tragedy' (detail), oil, graphite, varnish and collage on paper by Enrique Martinez Celaya, 1995, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu

[edit] External links