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From March 31 to June 5, 2023, Museo Marino Marini in Florence (Italy) is pleased to present Watching and Waiting: Enrique Martínez Celaya Selected Sculptures 2005-2023, the first exhibition in Italy by Cuban-born and Los Angeles-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya. Trained as a painter, in over thirty years of artistic practice, Martínez Celaya has also explored sculpture, photography, video and writing, investigating through all these media the fundamental relationships between human beings and the world. His figurative language is deep-rooted in nature, as he draws on common and familiar images such as trees, flowers, rivers, skies, the sea, but also animals and human figures. The initial simplicity of this imagery, however, gives way to a deeper, opaque, and unstable experience that lies beneath the surface.
The Marino Marini Museum in Florence, dedicated to the renowned Tuscan artist, boasts a permanent collection of 183 artworks by the same artist, including many sculptures, some of them monumental. Watching and Waiting, curated by Giorgio Verzotti, therefore focuses on Martínez Celaya’s sculptures, which are in dialogue with the rooms of the museum. For the first time, the artist transforms the flickering images of his paintings into concrete objects in bronze, cement, wax or wood, which share the space with the viewers and intensify their personal engagement. Sculpture thus becomes a powerful medium through which Martínez Celaya explores highly personal and intimate concepts that shape the emotional journey of life, such as memory, loss, vulnerability, fortitude, transience, and hope.
Martínez Celaya’s sculptures seem to be fragments of a story or poem that, in their materiality, occupy the space in which the visitor moves. The sculptures appear to be a permanent version of what is usually a fleeting act: weeping, sitting, raising an arm, sheltering. They play the role of witnesses, intensified by their immobility. Immobility that is not meant to be impassibility, but rather resistance, determination, wait and patience, as underlined by the title of the exhibition, Watching and Waiting.
On occasion of the exhibition at the Marino Marini Museum, from May 5 to July 29, 2023, the Secci Gallery is hosting a solo exhibition of the artist’s paintings.
About the artist
Enrique Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former physicist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. He is Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California, Distinguished Professor for the MFA in Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design, and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He has realized exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York, and Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany, among many others. His work is held in 56 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. Martínez Celaya is the author of several books, including two volumes of his Collected Writings and Interviews, 2010-2017 and 1990-2010, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020 and 2011; and The Nebraska Lectures, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. His work has been the subject of several monographic publications including Martínez Celaya, SEA SKY LAND: towards a map of everything, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021, Enrique Martínez Celaya and Käthe Kollwitz: Von den ersten und den letzten Dingen, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021, Martínez Celaya, Work and Documents 1990-2015, Santa Fe: Radius Books, 2016, and Enrique Martínez Celaya: Working Methods, Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2012.
Martínez Celaya was born in Cuba and raised in Spain and Puerto Rico. He initiated his formal artistic training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12. He received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and a minor in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Science with a specialization in Quantum Electronics from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted part of his graduate physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and holds several patents in laser devices. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and earned an MFA with the department’s highest distinction from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was also a Regents Fellow and Junior Fellow of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Art Here and Now Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1998, Martínez Celaya created Whale & Star as an evolving idea of social interaction and responsibility. It has an internationally recognized imprint that publishes books in art, poetry, art practice, and critical theory. Before his current academic posts, he held the positions of Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska, and Associate Professor at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate University. He received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Otis College of Art and Design in 2020 and delivered its commencement address. He is a Fellow of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, a Fellow of Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. He is a Governor on the Board of Otis College of Art and Design, was the artist advisor to the Anderson Ranch Arts Center from 2018-2021, where he was also the 2007 recipient of its National Artist Award, and he is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Hispanic Society of America. He has offered lectures at venues worldwide, including the American Academy in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Drawing School, and the Aspen Institute.
From March 31 to June 5, 2023, Museo Marino Marini in Florence (Italy) is pleased to present Watching and Waiting: Enrique Martínez Celaya Selected Sculptures 2005-2023, the first exhibition in Italy by Cuban-born and Los Angeles-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya. Trained as a painter, in over thirty years of artistic practice, Martínez Celaya has also explored sculpture, photography, video and writing, investigating through all these media the fundamental relationships between human beings and the world. His figurative language is deep-rooted in nature, as he draws on common and familiar images such as trees, flowers, rivers, skies, the sea, but also animals and human figures. The initial simplicity of this imagery, however, gives way to a deeper, opaque, and unstable experience that lies beneath the surface.
The Marino Marini Museum in Florence, dedicated to the renowned Tuscan artist, boasts a permanent collection of 183 artworks by the same artist, including many sculptures, some of them monumental. Watching and Waiting, curated by Giorgio Verzotti, therefore focuses on Martínez Celaya’s sculptures, which are in dialogue with the rooms of the museum. For the first time, the artist transforms the flickering images of his paintings into concrete objects in bronze, cement, wax or wood, which share the space with the viewers and intensify their personal engagement. Sculpture thus becomes a powerful medium through which Martínez Celaya explores highly personal and intimate concepts that shape the emotional journey of life, such as memory, loss, vulnerability, fortitude, transience, and hope.
Martínez Celaya’s sculptures seem to be fragments of a story or poem that, in their materiality, occupy the space in which the visitor moves. The sculptures appear to be a permanent version of what is usually a fleeting act: weeping, sitting, raising an arm, sheltering. They play the role of witnesses, intensified by their immobility. Immobility that is not meant to be impassibility, but rather resistance, determination, wait and patience, as underlined by the title of the exhibition, Watching and Waiting.
On occasion of the exhibition at the Marino Marini Museum, from May 5 to July 29, 2023, the Secci Gallery is hosting a solo exhibition of the artist’s paintings.
About the artist
Enrique Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former physicist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. He is Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California, Distinguished Professor for the MFA in Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design, and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He has realized exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York, and Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany, among many others. His work is held in 56 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. Martínez Celaya is the author of several books, including two volumes of his Collected Writings and Interviews, 2010-2017 and 1990-2010, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020 and 2011; and The Nebraska Lectures, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. His work has been the subject of several monographic publications including Martínez Celaya, SEA SKY LAND: towards a map of everything, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021, Enrique Martínez Celaya and Käthe Kollwitz: Von den ersten und den letzten Dingen, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021, Martínez Celaya, Work and Documents 1990-2015, Santa Fe: Radius Books, 2016, and Enrique Martínez Celaya: Working Methods, Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2012.
Martínez Celaya was born in Cuba and raised in Spain and Puerto Rico. He initiated his formal artistic training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12. He received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and a minor in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Science with a specialization in Quantum Electronics from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted part of his graduate physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and holds several patents in laser devices. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and earned an MFA with the department’s highest distinction from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was also a Regents Fellow and Junior Fellow of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Art Here and Now Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1998, Martínez Celaya created Whale & Star as an evolving idea of social interaction and responsibility. It has an internationally recognized imprint that publishes books in art, poetry, art practice, and critical theory. Before his current academic posts, he held the positions of Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska, and Associate Professor at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate University. He received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Otis College of Art and Design in 2020 and delivered its commencement address. He is a Fellow of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, a Fellow of Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. He is a Governor on the Board of Otis College of Art and Design, was the artist advisor to the Anderson Ranch Arts Center from 2018-2021, where he was also the 2007 recipient of its National Artist Award, and he is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Hispanic Society of America. He has offered lectures at venues worldwide, including the American Academy in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Drawing School, and the Aspen Institute.
Enrique Martínez Celaya (1964, La Habana, Cuba) is an artist, author, and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. His monumental and multi-faceted body of work connects art to literature, philosophy, and science, and suggests the map of a territory shaped by self, meaning, time, memory, ideations of home, exile, myth, and identity. His practice presumes art should be not only a cultural pursuit but also an ethical effort that turns thinking into action and aims to understand better and be engaged with the world and ourselves. He has realized major exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; and the Strandverket Konsthall, Marstrand Sweden, among many others. His work is held in over 50 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
Enrique Martínez Celaya (1964, La Habana, Cuba) is an artist, author, and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. His monumental and multi-faceted body of work connects art to literature, philosophy, and science, and suggests the map of a territory shaped by self, meaning, time, memory, ideations of home, exile, myth, and identity. His practice presumes art should be not only a cultural pursuit but also an ethical effort that turns thinking into action and aims to understand better and be engaged with the world and ourselves. He has realized major exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; and the Strandverket Konsthall, Marstrand Sweden, among many others. His work is held in over 50 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
- Enrique Martínez Celaya
- Giulio Turcato
