Born in Valparaíso (Chile, 1969) and based in Buenos Aires (Argentina) since 2005, Luis Martínez began his training at the School of Fine Arts of Viña del Mar. After a brief stint in Art at the University of Playa Ancha, in Valparaíso, he started his studies of chalcography with the engraver Jorge Martínez García. He graduated as a professor of engraving and painting at the Superior Institute of Fine Arts Santa Ana in Buenos Aires, where he works as a professor of painting.

With a strong influence of engraving, the paintings and drawings of Martinez have infinite lines and lattices. With the chalcography, he added to his works a prolific mixture of techniques. In his drawings the figuration, the color and the rhythm of the line coexist. This latter is never subordinated to the image, but rather acquires autonomy: it expands, it has a life of its own.

Guided by intuition and automatism, Martínez works with very varied materials: “I like to play with the watercolor stain and with the line: chance always takes me to another place”, he says. The mystery of life and death is a central theme in his works. “I am passionate about investigating the time and the movement that one can grasp with the stroke; in the spiritual and physical mutation, which is always a great mystery, ” says Martinez.

The drawing of Martinez has great influence from the comics. With oil, charcoal, nib and pastels, he creates a universe of anthropomorphic characters, always in disturbing mutation. Annunciation is a key example of those fictional spaces created by the artist. “We are never the same as yesterday: thought is constantly changing,” he says.

Its complex figures seem from another time; stones and capsules enclose fantastic, unforgettable worlds. In that universe live enigmatic characters. For Martínez, life and death form a permanent metamorphic framework: “For me,” he says, “painting is like rescuing memories of an ancestral memory.”