Mario Martinez

Martinez was born in Penjamo, Arizona. Since 2002, Brooklyn, New York, has been his home. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University in 1979, and a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985. In 1998, he was the recipient of the Native Arts Research Fellowship awarded by ATLATL and the National Museum of the American Indian, and in 2007, he was selected by the U.S. State Department and the National Museum of the American Indian for the Art in Embassies program. Martinez has also completed two mural projects, one in 1999 for the Penjamo Yaqui Community Center in Scottsdale, and the other in 2003 for the Heard Museum in Phoenix. More recently, he was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation “Creating a Living Legacy” Artist Award in 2013/2014, and an eight-week Robert Rauschenberg Residency in 2015. Well-known for his abstract paintings of biomorphic shapes reminiscent of flowers or dream states, Martinez is influenced by his culture, the Sonoran desert environment of his youth, and his love of abstract expressionism.