Since the beginning of his career in the mid-2000s, Eddie Martinez has become one of the leading artists in the world today, achieving both critical acclaim and commercial success. While he is compared to the greats of modern art like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Philip Guston, Martinez’s style is distinctly his own, often toeing the line between figurative and abstract. His compositions, brimming with frenetic brushstrokes, bold lines, and striking colors, reflect the urgency and impulse he works with. Pace and process are key driving forces behind Martinez’s visual language, with the artist stating, “I started silk screening my small drawings onto large scale because I wanted to be able to capture the speed and immediacy and energy of a sharpie drawing.”
Untitled, 2008, is a prominent example of the artist’s ability to immediately conjure an atmosphere and energy in a work without strict figural depiction. A pot of flowers rests on top of a simple red table along with a handful of other indistinct objects. The subject matter is inherently jovial yet still elicits an air of contemplation and solitude as it sits against a stark white background.
Another distinct element of Martinez’s visual language is his continual references to motifs in the art history canon. His “blockheads” –bulbous skull shapes with large eyes – have appeared in his work since 2005 and were, in the artist’s words, “a direct response to [his] obsession with Guston.” Perhaps the foremost link between Martinez’s oeuvre and the pillars of art history is his adaptation of the still life. The artist subverts the traditional notion of still lifes, abandoning realism and opting instead to depict seemingly mundane elements of everyday life in his gestural style. Flowerpots, sports equipment, and food are all injected with a sense of dynamism by Martinez’s uncompromisingly bold aesthetic.
The present lot serves as a strong example of Martinez’s ability to deftly reshape a historically static aesthetic into a product of his own style. Much like the Dutch still life masters of the 17th century, Martinez has embraced the idea of the table as a staging area upon which objects and their forms, colors and auras can be highlighted: “It’s something I’ve gravitated to over the past decade – this idea of the container. I used to make these tabletop still lifes, where everything kind of fit into that rectangular shape.” While his table paintings have become a staple of his oeuvre, consistently appearing throughout his career, Untitled offers a glimpse into the early stages of Martinez’s experimentation with the motif.
Around this time, Martinez would work closely with his longtime friend Chuck Webster. Both based in Brooklyn at the time, the artists would often collaborate on drawings. Their first monographs were even published together in the same book. The present lot serves as a reminder of the bond between the two artists, as an inscription by Webster including his initials and the title of a work from his King Ropes series appears on the reverse.
