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| Enrique Martínez Celaya, El regalo (para Juanito), 2023. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Mei-Lee Ney. (c) Enrique Martínez Celaya |
Huntington trustee Mei-Lee Ney has given the institution 8 works by Cuban-American artist Enrique Martínez Celaya. They span painting, sculpture, drawing, mixed media, and photography. Among the paintings is El regalo (para Juanito), a 12.5-ft-wide work in oil, wax, and charcoal that was featured in the artist's 2023 show at Havana's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, a first for an exiled Cuban artist.
Trained as a physicist and active as a painter and poet, Martínez Celaya has a long association with the Huntington. Several of his sculptures are on the grounds, and he created There-Bound, the migratory bird-themed installation in the loggia of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art.
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| Enrique Martínez Celaya, The Virtue, 2019. The Huntington, gift of Mei-Lee Ney |
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| Enrique Martínez Celaya, Unbroken Poetry, 1999 (oil, tar, feathers, and fabric on canvas). The Huntington, gift of Mei-Lee Ney |
Comments
I like contemporary art as much as the next person, but after awhile it becomes a gigantic blur. That's even truer when so many living, talented artists do exist (even more so worldwide) and the question remains how any one of them will withstand the test of time.
The artistic, technical and aesthetic fly in the ointment of the local arts scene will really crop up when the Lucas Museum opens.
> anything at all...
^ Instead of being a troll, try to at least debate without coming off like a dumb-ass