By Mario Martinez

Mario Martinez (born 1953) is a contemporary abstract painter. He is a Native American artist who is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe from New Penjamo (in Scottsdale), the smallest of six Yaqui settlements, in Arizona. He currently lives in New York City. Martinez received his bachelor’s degree from School of Art, Arizona State University in Tempe and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited in 2005 in a one-person retrospective at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Notable group exhibitions include: “Who Stole the Tee Pee?” at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York; “AlieNation” at the American Indian Community House Gallery. His work was recently shown at “IN/SIGHT 2010″ at Chelsea Art Museum, New York and “The Importance of IN/VISIBILITY” at Abrazo Interno Gallery, New York, 2009. In 2002 Martinez was one of the first non-Japanese artists to be invited to exhibit at the Contemporary Artists Federation Group Show at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan. In 2000, he was a visiting professor of art at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and in 2001 he received the Native Artist in Residence Fellowship from the National Museum of the American Indian. In 2005, Martinez completed a commission for the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona; a 22-foot mural called Sonoran Desert: Yaqui Home as part of “Home: Desert Peoples in the Southwest” exhibition. Martinez will be featured in a solo exhibition at Mesa Contemporary Arts in Mesa, Arizona opening September 10, 2010.

Source: wikipedia