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.