Enrique Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former physicist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions worldwide. His notable projects and exhibitions include those at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Italy; the Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba; and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig in Germany. He has also selectively incorporated two-person exhibitions with historical artists who have been influential to his practice, including Albert Pinkham Ryder, Kathë Kollwitz, and Diego Velázquez. His work is held in over sixty 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, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Martínez Celaya is the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts in the history of the University of Southern California and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he was also a Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar. He is the author of nine books on art, art practice, philosophy, and poetry, including two volumes of his Collected Writings and Interviews, covering the periods 2010–2017 and 1990–2010, both published by the University of Nebraska Press. His work has also been the focus of several monographic publications, including two recent books by Hatje Cantz, Berlin: Martínez Celaya, SEA SKY LAND: towards a map of everything and Enrique Martínez Celaya and Käthe Kollwitz: Von den ersten und den letzten Dingen. In 1998, he founded Whale & Star, an initiative that explores social interaction and responsibility, recognized internationally for its influential books in art, poetry, art practice, and critical theory.
Martínez Celaya was born in Cuba, raised in Spain and Puerto Rico, and relocated to the United States when he was 18. He initiated his formal artistic training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12, and studied applied physics, literature, and art at Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received four patents for his scientific work, and has held the positions of Associate Professor at Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University, as well as Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska. Martínez Celaya has offered lectures at venues worldwide, including the American Academy in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Drawing School in London, and the Aspen Institute. He is a fellow of multiple institutions including the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation, and serves on the Board of Trustees of Otis College of Art and Design.