Raul Martinez

Art Brokerage: Raul Martinez Cuban Artist: b. 1927-1995. Raúl Martínez is one of the most important figures in the history of Cuban art. His energetic, multifaceted career was not limited to painting, but extended with equal vigor to photography; publicity; book, newspaper, and poster design; public art murals; set design; and teaching. He was, in all senses of the term, a "multidirectional" creator. Driven by a restless temperament, Martínez experimented with different approaches to painting. A founder of the art collective Grupo de los Once (Group of Eleven), by the mid-1960s he had explored many variations of abstractionism in a quick succession of stylistic periods that culminated around 1964. At the same time, he started working as a publicist and photographer. Two years later, Martínez started working on what could be considered his greatest innovative achievement as a painter: an extensive iconography of Cuban heroes and leaders. If there is an oeuvre that embodies the image of the Cuban Revolution, it would indeed be Martínez's. Without intending to, and sometimes even working against the grain, his works gradually constituted a re-envisioning of the most arduous moments in contemporary Cuban history. Far from a propagandistic art bowing to ideological demands and pre-established icons, Martínez's paintings re-invented those icons, as well as the face of a people undergoing a process of marked social change. In his images, several generations of Cubans have recognized themselves, reaffirming Martínez's role as a foundational figure in contemporary Cuban art. Listings wanted.