He has realized major exhibitions, projects, interventions, and social and intellectual interactions not confined to museums and galleries, including the Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; and the Strandverket Konsthall, Marstrand Sweden, among many others. His work is held in over 50 public collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
Martínez Celaya is the author of several books, including two volumes of his Collected Writings and Interviews, 2010-2017 and 1990-2010, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020 and 2011; The Nebraska Lectures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011; On Art and Mindfulness: Notes from the Anderson Ranch. Los Angeles: Whale & Star Press, 2016; October. Amsterdam: Cinubia Press, 2002. His work has been the subject of several monographic publications including Enrique Martínez Celaya and Käthe Kollwitz: Von den ersten und den letzten Dingen. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2021; Martínez Celaya, Work and Documents 1990-2015. Santa Fe: Radius Books, 2016; Enrique Martínez Celaya: Small Paintings 1974-2015. Birmingham: Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, 2016; Enrique Martínez Celaya: Working Methods. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2012; Enrique Martínez Celaya, 1992-2000. Köln: Wienand Verlag, 2002.
Martínez Celaya holds the position of Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California. Previously, he held the academic posts of Roth Family Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska, and Associate Professor at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate University. He received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Otis College of Art and Design and delivered its 2020 commencement address. He is a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, a Fellow of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, a Fellow of Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. He is a Governor on the Board of Otis College of Art and Design, the artist advisor to the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, where he was also the 2007 recipient of its National Artist Award, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Hispanic Society of America. He created an advanced mentored study summer program at the Anderson Ranch that attracts artists from many countries. He has also offered lectures at venues worldwide, including the American Academy in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Drawing School, the Aspen Institute, and the University of Texas at the invitation of the University's Chancellor.
In 1998, Martínez Celaya created Whale & Star as an evolving idea of social interaction and responsibility. It has an internationally recognized imprint that publishes books in art, poetry, art practice, and critical theory. Whale & Star also maintains a project of public lectures co-sponsored by the University of Southern California, hosts several working visits each year for poor and at-risk children, keeps a residency and intern program, and offers scholarships to artists.
Martínez Celaya was born in Cuba and raised in Spain and Puerto Rico. He initiated his formal training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12 and developed what was to become an enduring interest in writing and philosophy in the turbulent Puerto Rican cultural and political environment of the 1970s. He received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and a minor in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Science with a specialization in Quantum Electronics from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted part of his graduate physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and while there, he painted the Long Island landscape. He holds several patents in laser devices and completed all his doctorate coursework and a significant part of his dissertation before deciding to devote more time to art. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and earned an MFA with the department's highest distinction from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was also a Regents Fellow and Junior Fellow of Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
From: Artist website