In the first comprehensive study of Martínez Celaya’s multifaceted process, Mary Rakow and Matthew Biro illuminate previously unaddressed aspects of the artist’s practice including his tendency to destroy his own work, his materials and his approach towards them, his literary influences, and the changes that led to pivotal moments in his career. The bookfeatures new photography, archival images, and a number of previously unpublished works. Also included are an interview by Rakow with the artist that reveals his unique practice as well as a biographical chronology, a bibliography, and an exhibition history.

Enrique Martínez Celaya is one of the most intriguing and celebrated artists to emerge from the United States in recent years. Trained as artist and physicist, his practice embraces painting, sculpture, photography, and writing. His projects frequently take the form of multi-disciplinary environments that balance images with the immediacy of the material experience, and his ideas as well as his approach are influenced by sources that range from Nordic poetry to quantum physics. His early training as a scientist and his interest in philosophy is evident in his layered work which is cerebral, emotionally direct, and deeply connected to life.

Matthew Biro is Chair and Professor in the Department of the History of Art and the University of Michigan. He is the author of Anselm Kieferand the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger(New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1998), The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), and Anselm Kiefer (London: Phaidon Press, 2013).

Mary Rakow, Ph.D., is an American novelist. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she is the recipient of two Lannan Foundation Residencies and a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship.