Bidspirit auction | Enrique Martinez Celaya ”Body Large

Enrique Martinez Celaya ”Body Large Room” Painting - Enrique Martinez Celaya (Cuban/American, b. 1964). Oil, graphite, and tar on canvas painting titled ”Body in a Large Room (Beautiful Words), ” 1999. Pencil signed, dated, and titled along the verso. Provenance: The Contemporary Museum, Hawaii, 2001; Orange County Museum, California, 2001-2002; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 2002; Distinguished Corporate Collection. Lot essay: Enrique Martínez Celaya is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, sculpture, immersive environments, and literature to explore existential, social, and ethical conditions and questions. Blending reality, myth, and memory, Martinez Celaya describes his work as an open-ended, existential inquiry, thoroughly examining the human experience through unconventional materials ranging from traditional oil paint and bronze to tar, blood, and sugar. His poetic, deeply philosophical approach has earned him international acclaim, with his work exhibited globally and held in more than sixty major public collections. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the State Hermitage Museum, the Moderna Museet, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Though he trained as a painter's apprentice at the age of twelve, before fully committing to art, Martínez Celaya excelled as a scientist, authoring research papers and securing patents in laser physics and quantum electronics during his studies at Cornell and UC Berkeley. Transitioning into academia and the arts, he became the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts in the history of the University of Southern California (USC), where he received the prestigious Associates Award for Artistic Achievement in 2025 alongside multiple Phi Kappa Phi honors. In addition to teaching, he is the author of nine books on philosophy, poetry, and art, the founder of the multi-disciplinary mentorship initiative Whale & Star, and was the first Visual Arts Fellow at The Huntington Library, where his sculpture became the institution’s first contemporary acquisition. Unframed; height: 84 in x width: 72 in. Framed; height: 86 in x width: 74 in x depth: 3 in. Condition: The colors are bold and bright. There are no visible tears, creases, losses, or restorations. Light wear to the frame.