Eddie Martinez

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 wall works incorporating figuration and abstraction, painting and drawing, which foreground his signature muscular brushwork. The artist frequently places his forms and figures against monochrome backgrounds that serve to delineate and emphasise his urgent strokes. His paintings incorporate bold contours through the combination of mediums such as oil, enamel, and spray paint, and often include collaged found objects. Martinez additionally utilises these scavenged objects in the construction of three-dimensional works, combining and casting them in bronze. The resulting sculptures recall the exuberant forms that dominate his canvases.

Martinez’s practice draws from a deep understanding of painting’s histories, and his pieces are dense with references to canonical artworks as well as those with personal relevance. Many of the artist’s works recall CoBrA and action painting, while others signal to the ominously cartoonish late-career work of Philip Guston. New York Times’ critic Roberta Smith has described his style as “a kind of updated, liberated Neo-Expressionism.” 

Representing the Republic of San Marino at La Biennale di Venezia in 2024, Martinez occupied La Fucina del Futuro with Nomader, an exhibition of new work conceived specifically for the Biennale and curated by Alison M. Gingeras. The same year, the artist held major institutional exhibitions at Space K in Seoul, South Korea and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, featuring examples of Martinez’s pop culture-infused abstraction and recent Bufly and White Outs series.