Lecture | Mario Martinez

Join us for a lecture by artist Mario Martinez on Wednesday, August 28, 1-2 p.m.

Martinez's work Esoteric Vibration Landscape is currently on view in special exhibition The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans.

About Mario Martinez:

Born in 1953 in Penjamo village, a Yaqui settlement in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mario Martinez is an enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. He received his BFA from the School of Art, Arizona State University in 1979, and in 1985, he received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. A great admirer of the New York School and Abstract Expressionism, Martinez creates expansive canvases with writhing forms that often echo the turbulent surfaces of Gorky or de Kooning. Though he often avoids direct references to Yaqui traditions, cultural allusions and visual references permeate his work. Since 1991, Martinez’s work has appeared in over 50 solo and group exhibitions at prestigious venues; he has received numerous grants, fellowships, and awards. His work features in the permanent collections of institutions around the country including the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art (Santa Fe); the Eiteljorg Museum (Indianapolis); the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.); the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago); and the Heard Museum (Phoenix), among others.