Martinez uses signature figurative elements combined with gestural, abstract blocks of color to create work that is energetic and has since applied this to printmaking. Fine Ants (Black Out) is a lithograph in nine colors, inspired by Martinez's painting Whitewash Fine Ants.
Brooklyn-based artist Eddie Martinez draws inspiration from a wide-range of sources, spanning from popular urban culture to Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. Martinez's work joins together painting and drawing, abstraction and representation in non-traditional ways. Imbued with a sense of personal iconography, his practice often combines signature figurative elements, such as bug-eyed humans and eclectic headgear with gestural, abstract blocks of color. Energetic and raw, his paintings employ an aggressive use of color and texture with various combinations of oil, enamel, spray paint and collage elements on canvas. Martinez also produces large and small-scale abstract sculpture, made mostly from found materials such as rubber hoses, Styrofoam, cardboard, and metal scraps sourced from wherever the artist is working at the time.
Eddie Martinez was born in 1977 on Groton Naval Base, Groton, Connecticut. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums and institutions including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, the Drawing Center, New York, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Michigan, and the Davis Museum, Wellesley, Massachusetts. His works are included in public collections such as the Saatchi Collection and Hiscox Collection, London; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; the Marciano Collection, Los Angeles; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Morgan Library & Museum, New York; and the Davis Museum, Wellesley.
