Eddie Martinez - 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale in Association with Poly Auction Hong Kong Thursday, December 3, 2020 | Phillips

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  • “I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to think anything. I don’t have anything in particular in the work I want people to see, I want it all to be interpreted.” — Eddie Martinez

    American contemporary visual artist Eddie Martinez is widely acclaimed for his gestural and expressive paintings. Combined with a distinctive pictorial language, his practice blends multiple media such as oil, acrylic and spray paint applied with aerosol can or thick impasto brushstrokes and further manipulated in a variety of ways: wiped, scraped, scratched both dry and wet. 

     

     

    Ghost Fish presents the viewer with vibrant colour blocks intermingled with clearly contoured outlines. Taking visual cues from the icons of street art and Abstract expressionism, Martinez’s raw and energetic canvas effortlessly walks the line between painting and drawing, abstraction and figuration. Conveying the erratic feel of a spontaneous doodle, Ghost Fish is paradoxically executed with a confident painterly approach that ‘exuberantly combines’ Martinez’s ‘exceptional gifts as a painter and draftsman’.i  Ghost Fish showcases Martinez’s vigorous celebration of colour and multi-layered approach, and in fact hides an earlier work  - ‘Bad War’ - which was executed in 2009. This canvas embodies the living nature of graffiti, the transgressive and unpredictable nature of its protagonist and the immediacy of the artist’s hand.

     

    Martinez has been honoured with solo shows at respected museums and institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2019), Bronx Museum, New York (2018), the Drawing Center, New York (2017). His work now forms part of notable public collections such as the Saatchi Collection in London and the Morgan Library in New York. Martinez recently joined Blum & Poe’s artist roster, confirming the global demand for his works.

     

     i  Roberta Smith, The New York Times, 11 February 2010, online

     

    • Provenance

      ZieherSmith, New York
      Walter Otero Contemporary Art, San Juan
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

Ο◆109

Ghost Fish

2011
signed 'MARTINEZ' lower right; further signed, inscribed and dated '"BAD WAR" E. MARTINEZ 2009 E. MARTINEZ' on the reverse
oil, acrylic, spray paint and collaged canvas on canvas (over painting Bad War, 2009)
152.4 x 182.9 cm. (60 x 72 in.)
Executed in 2011.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
HK$1,800,000 - 2,800,000 
€230,000-357,000
$231,000-359,000

Sold for HK$2,142,000

Contact Specialist

Danielle So
Associate Specialist, Head of Day Sale

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale in Association with Poly Auction

Hong Kong Auction 4 December 2020