Enrique Martínez Celaya works in a variety of media including painting, photography, sculpture and installation. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale paintings made from wax, oil, blood, tar and other materials. Influenced by the writings of poets and philosophers, and trained also as a scientist, his work explores themes of yearning, displacement, and memory.

Through reductive imagery and dense execution, Martínez Celaya’s work achieves a deep emotional register while remaining contemplative and cerebral. His work is exhibited and collected extensively and represented in major museums throughout the United States and abroad, including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His essays have appeared in many publications, including the collection published by the University of Nebraska Press entitled Enrique Martínez Celaya: Collected Writings and Interviews, 1990-2010.