Eddie Martinez
Nomader
San Marino Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
Curated by Alison M. Gingeras
We are delighted to congratulate Eddie Martinez on the announcement that he will represent the Republic of San Marino at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia this spring. Titled Nomader, the pavilion is curated by Alison M. Gingeras and will feature new paintings along with sculptures and drawings.
San Marino has a history of inviting artists of various nationalities to represent their pavilion in past editions of the Biennale, a gesture that pays homage to the Republic's legacy of providing refuge to foreign nationals.
The conceptual underpinnings of Martinez’s work echo the Biennale Arte 2024's main curatorial theme, Foreigners Everywhere, and resonate with San Marino’s history of embracing outsiders. As a painter, Martinez has allowed his work to formally and conceptually migrate from the legacy of automatic drawing and abstraction as practiced by the CoBrA group to his distinctive take on post-Philip Guston cartoony figuration as well as his unusual revisitation of various art-historical genres such as still lifes and portraiture. His experimental, nomadic practice is ever-changing, deploying different media—oil, enamel, spray paint, collage, found objects, and more—as if he were always trying to make his visual language foreign to himself.
Eddie Martinez: Nomader will be on view at the Pavilion of the Republic of San Marino from April 20 through November 24, 2024. The San Marino Pavilion is organized by FR Istituto d'Arte Contemporanea S.p.a.