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, and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. His notable projects and exhibitions include the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Italy, the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany, among many others. His work is held in 57 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 author of nine books, including two volumes of his Collected Writings and Interviews, 2010-2017 and 1990-2010, both published by the University of Nebraska Press. His work has been the subject of 14 monographic publications including two recent books published 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. He is the founder of Whale & Star, an evolving idea of social interaction and responsibility, whose imprint is internationally recognized for its books in art, poetry, art practice, and critical theory. 

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, and studied applied physics, literature, and art at Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He held the positions of Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and Associate Professor at the Claremont Graduate University. He 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 organizations 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.