Mario Martinez (b. 1953, Scottsdale, AZ) lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from the School of Art, Arizona State University in 1979, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985. In 2025 he presented his first solo exhibition with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations. Recent exhibitions include Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (2025); Flow States - LA TRIENAL 2024, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2024-5); and The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY (2024). Since 1991, Martinez's work has appeared in almost 50 solo and group exhibitions at prestigious venues across the US, including Denver Art Museum, CO (1995, 1998); Montclair Art Museum, NJ (2018-2020); and Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN (2015-2016, 2017-2018). In 2005, he was the subject of a major mid-career retrospective at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Native Arts Research Fellowship, (1998, National Museum of the American Indian); an Artist in Residence Fellowship (2001-2002, National Museum of the American Indian); a Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL Grant (2013-2014); a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2014-2015); and the Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award (2017, New York Foundation for the Arts).
Martinez's work is featured in the collections of numerous museums and institutions across the country, such as the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art, Santa Fe, NM; Eiteljorg Museum, IN; Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL; and the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Tucson Museum of Art, AZ, among others.