Eddie Martinez: 20 Years of Painting

Eddie Martinez, with text contributions from Dan Nadel, and Ross Simonini

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The first comprehensive monograph showcasing 20 years of paintings by contemporary American abstract expressionist and figurative artist, Eddie Martinez.

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About the book

The first comprehensive monograph showcasing 20 years of paintings by contemporary American abstract expressionist and figurative artist, Eddie Martinez.

This debut monograph on contemporary American artist Eddie Martinez celebrates two decades of work by the artist, whose energetic, improvisational paintings have made him one of the most compelling of his generation. Focusing solely on his paintings, divided into key themes, the volume traces the evolution of an artist whose expressionist canvases—at once raw and refined, and bold, yet intimate—expand the language of contemporary abstract and figurative art while conversing facilely with the much-lauded art history that precedes it.

Martinez’s practice is rooted in an unguarded physicality. Strong lines, insistent gestures, fields of saturated color, and washes in whites and blacks collide in compositions that purposely intermingle the spontaneous and the meticulously orchestrated. Over the years, he has developed a signature approach that fuses the everyday with the art-historical: cartoon-like outlines and familiar domestic motifs appear alongside dense painterly passages, nodding to urban life, personal memory, and the lineage of painters he admires.

In addition to the artist himself contributing revealing anecdotes about some of his personally noteworthy paintings, the monograph also features new essays by esteemed writers Dan Nadel and Ross Simonini, each offering a distinct vantage point on Martinez’s evolution as an artist and his contribution to painting.

Eddie Martinez: 20 Years of Painting offers an immersive journey through the progression of an artist working at the height of his powers. Richly illustrated and rigorously contextualized, it serves as both a long-awaited retrospective and an essential foundation for understanding a painter whose work feels urgent, generous, and profoundly alive.

About the author

Eddie Martinez (b. 1977, Groton Naval Base, Connecticut) is an American painter and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn. Martinez is best known for his large-scale paintings that incorporate figuration and abstraction, painting and drawing, and foreground his signature muscular brushwork. His works often feature a combination of mediums, including oil, enamel, spray paint, and collaged found objects.

Martinez’s practice draws from a deep understanding of painting’s histories, with works that are dense with allusions to canonical artworks as well as personal references. Many of his works recall CoBrA and action painting, while others nod to the ominously cartoonish late-career work of Philip Guston. During his childhood and adolescence, Martinez moved back and forth between opposite regions of the United States, sometimes uprooted more than once a year. His magpie style of appropriating fragments of imagery emanates from this nomadic background, with traces of the different landscapes traversed during his youth occasionally appearing in his iconography, revisited and transformed from work to work.

Martinez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at La Biennale di Venezia (where he represented the Republic of San Marino in an exhibition curated by Alison M. Gingeras); Space K in Seoul, South Korea; the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York; the Yuz Museum, Shanghai; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; The Bronx Museum, New York; the Drawing Center, New York; and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, among others. His works are represented in international public and private collections.

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