Born: June 24, 1974, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Based in: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Website: https://soypablomartin.com.ar
Instagram: @pablomartin74
Gallery Representation: McCully and Crane (UK), Ready Art Gallery (Uruguay), Hidrolands Grafisch Atelier (Brazil)
Biography:
Pablo Martín has been drawing for as long as he can remember. For many years, he imagined himself becoming a comic book author, until he discovered what it meant to work as a professional visual artist. Around 2009, he began developing structured visual art projects and has continued building his practice steadily ever since.
He has no formal academic training in art. Instead, his education came through workshops with artists he admires, sustained self practice, and ongoing exchange with fellow artists. Early influences trace back to his childhood, when he repeatedly studied books about the Impressionists in his parents’ home. Those images left a lasting imprint and helped shape his desire to dedicate his life to art.
Today, Martín is deeply concerned with the resurgence of far right ideologies worldwide, particularly in Argentina. His current work addresses these political and social realities directly. In collaboration with Brazilian publisher Hidrolands Grafisch Atelier, he produced a serigraph book titled Lords of Evil, focusing on the figures leading these movements. He is now developing a new series of paintings titled The Machines of Hate, which explores the emotional and social consequences of these ideologies on individuals and communities. Social media has become an important tool for him in sharing this work globally and connecting with audiences beyond borders.
Artistic Practice:
Martín primarily works with tools he makes himself. He draws using sticks of varying sizes and shades surfaces with credit cards or pieces of plastic. These unconventional tools allow him to reach what he describes as a more visceral and primitive image, which sits at the core of his practice.
His work can be described as brutal and visceral expressionism. He is currently focused on themes of hatred, abuse of power, and violence. These concerns exist alongside a long-standing interest in Indigenous art, African art, cave painting, folk traditions, and art brut. Cyclical repetition appears consistently throughout his work, reinforcing the sense that history, violence, and power continuously reappear in different forms.
His influences span across disciplines and generations, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Marlene Dumas, Huma Bhabha, Antonio Saura, Antonio Berni, Rómulo Macció, Grupo CoBrA, David Lynch, Yorgos Lanthimos, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Thom Yorke, Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, street posters, and graphic design.
Selected Exhibitions & Projects:
LuBA — Collaboration with Juan Pablo Diz, Museo de Bellas Artes Félix Amador, Luján (2025)
Cabeza Volcán — Solo exhibition, Espinosa Atelier (2024)
Ya inmortal, ya fantasma — Group exhibition, Museo Histórico Sarmiento (2022)
The Two Headed Beast — Collaboration with Pauline Hughes, Editions Gallery, Liverpool (2021)
Cactumanos — Solo exhibition, Huella Botánica (2019)
Primigenios — Collaboration with Alejandro Bovo Theiler and Jorge Sánchez, CC Paco Urondo
Restos — Solo exhibition, Museo Banco Provincia
Among these, Primigenios holds particular significance for Martín. The exhibition, curated by Eduardo Stupía and Florencia Fernández Frank, was a collaboration with artists Jorge Sánchez and Alejandro Bovo Theiler, whom he deeply admires. As a solo project, Cactumanos at Huella Botánica, a vivarium-art space, also stands out as a meaningful moment in his career.
Current & Upcoming Projects:
Martín is currently focused on a collaborative fanzine publishing project titled Sistema circulatorio ediciones. He continues to seek new spaces for exhibitions and collaborative work while expanding his practice across multiple formats.
Artist Statement:
What drives my work is the search for what I understand as the human element. I draw inspiration from the art of Indigenous peoples, folk art, outsider art, and African art. While I feel my roots lie there, they are also present in the moment, allowing me to bring those resonances into a contemporary practice.
I paint and draw using small sticks on found paper and wood. I choose tools and supports that connect me to the primal and the visceral, to nature, and to that which is marked by time.
A recurring image in my work is the head. For years, I have been investigating the complexity within this archetypal form, which is mask, face, and object. The collective is governed by ritual, and I am interested in making visible the relationships between human beings, deities, and the natural environment. Geometry appears as imaginary symbols that construct spatiality’s, connections, and hierarchies.
