Oliverio G. Martínez , 1901-1938

Born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila in January 30, 1901. In the ten years in which he was active as an artist, Martínez´s monumental stone sculptures and bronzes of all sizes helped fashion Mexico´s post-revolutionary sculptural vocabulary. In New York, where he had gone to work in 1925 at the Mexican National Railways agency, he contracted the tuberculosis that would cut short his career. He attended the National School of Fine Arts from 1928 to 1930, his intructors including José María Fernández Urbina. After a year of study he won the school´s first sculpture competition. His first massive bronze sculpture was executed in 1930 for his native state of Coahuila. On September 12, 1933 the steering committee of the Board for the Monument to the Revolution opened a competition for sculptures to adorn that structure: Martínez was awarded the commission for his design Transformación. In 1936 he joined the faculty of the School of Sculpture and soon was appointed deputy director. His works are an artist´s distillation of the continuing quest for the Mexican and the modern, his gift for synthesis extracting the essence of the geometry of forms. Died in Mexico City, January 21, 1938.

Obrero Bronze 14.5 x 23 x 10 cm

Primeras letras Bronze 22 x 15 x 10.5 cm

Maternidad Bronze 22 x 38.7 x 10.5 cm

Dolor Bronze 18 x 13.5 x 13.8 cm

Caballito  (1932) Bronze 28 x 25 x 13 cm

Zapata  (1936) Bronze 20.5 x 7.5 x 14.5 cm

Galope  (ca. 1935) Bronze 21 x 30 x 12 cm