César Martínez

Dando Vida (Giving Life), c. 1999

Lithograph with linocut

30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.88 cm)

Edition. Printer's Proof (From the edition of: 1 BAT, 2 APs, 2 PPs, and 22 editions )

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This lithograph with linocut print is a development of the Martinez’s woodcut of the same name from 1975. In the print, Martínez presents a cosmological view of typical pre-Colombian thinking. At the base of the cosmology, buried inside the earth and metaphorically in the “underworld,” are human skeletal remains crouched in a fetal position. Looking upward, the skeleton appears to be shrinking in horror as the roots of a nopal reach into his space to surround him. Dando Vida means “giving life,” which is symbolized by the nopal taking life from the skeleton. The plant is superimposed upon a pyramidal shape. Light from the sun streams down on the nopal while a moon is surrounded by stars on the other side of the nopal. “The juxtaposition of the sun and the moon is derived from pre-Colombian mythology that places a great emphasis on the natural oppositions of the world.” – Dr. Carey Clements Rote

About the artist

César Martínez

Martínez was born in Laredo, Texas, and graduated from Texas A&I University, Kingsville in 1968. He now lives and works in San Antonio, Texas. A major figure in the Chicano Art Movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, Martínez’s portraits are icons of Mexican American art history. Deeply rooted in his native South Texas and its Mexican American culture, Martínez’s work reflects a broad knowledge of the western art canon and finds inspiration from color-field paintings, Mexican architecture, and photography. Martínez is drawn to the way in which Mexican American family photographs served as intimate, personal portraits, during a time when only white individuals or groups were being iconized in paintings. Martínez offsets his melancholic subjects against a vibrant palette of clothes in tension against abstract backgrounds. The individuals in Martínez’s works are merely hybrids derived and elaborated from many different photographs found in high school yearbooks, obituaries, newspapers, and other public sources. Martínez explains “The idea of a very frontal, and very emotionless, almost expressionless face just staring at you, came from Richard Avedon’s work.”

Martínez’s work has been included in landmark exhibits like Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters & Sculptors; La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexican/U.S. Border Experience; and Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation 1965-1985. He was honored with a solo exhibition, and accompanying book, at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas in 2009. His work has been exhibited and is part of the permanent collection of institutions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.; Brooklyn Art Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, IL.