Enrique Martínez Celaya is an internationally renowned artist, author, and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions around the world, and he is the author of books and papers in art, poetry, philosophy, and physics. Martínez Celaya was born in Cuba and raised in Spain and Puerto Rico. He initiated his formal training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12 and developed what was to become an enduring interest in writing and philosophy in the turbulent Puerto Rican cultural and political environment of the 1970s. He received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and a minor in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Science with a specialization in Quantum Electronics from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted part of his graduate physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and while there he painted the Long Island landscape. He published scientific papers on superconductivity and lasers, is the inventor of several patented laser devices, and completed all coursework for his doctorate and a significant part of his dissertation before his decision to devote more time to art. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and earned an MFA with the department's highest distinction from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was also a junior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. He is the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He has offered lectures at venues around the world including the American Academy in Berlin and the Aspen Institute. He is an Artist Advisor at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado, and previously served on its Board of Trustees. Today, his work is held in over 50 public collections internationally, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and others.
