Antonio Martorell

Antonio Martorell, born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1939. His workshop is in La Playa de Ponce. He has been artist-in-residence for more than 39 years at the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey. He keeps busy at painting, drawing, installation and performance art, graphics, set and costume design, theatre, films, TV, radio, writing for the press and has published five books. He is a host of the WIPR-TV program En la punta de la lengua. This television series has won 5 Emmy Awards. For more than thirty nine he has been a co-host with Rosa Luisa Márquez in the radio program 1,2,3 Probando on Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico. Visiting Professor at Hostos Community College in New York (1997). He was awarded a fellowship at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (2007). His work has been exhibited and awarded in and out of the country and is represented in private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum, NY, the NY Historical Society, El Museo del Barrio, NY, the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery, the Latino Art Collection of the Smithsonian, Washington, DC, National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture, Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Chicago, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, NY, Princeton University Library, NJ, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico, Casa de Las Américas, Cuba, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Museo UPR, Río Piedras and Cayey, La Casa del Libro, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, PR, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas Venezuela, Museo de la República, Bogotá, Colombia among others. He is a member of the Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española. As a writer, Martorell is the author of the memoir La piel de la memoria (1991)(translated as Memory’s Tattoo by Andrew Hurley), El libro dibujado/El dibujo librado (1995), El velorio (no-vela)(Martorell’s Wake)(2010), in a bilingual edition with English translation by Andrew Hurley which is a fictionalized commentary of the iconic nineteenth-century painting, El velorio, by the Puerto Rican Francisco Oller, Pierdencuentra (2019), Los colores de Tó (2022), the commemorative edition of the thirtieth anniversary of his first book La piel de la memoria by the publishing house of Universidad de Puerto Rico and his latest book Prendas de vestir y desvestir (2024)(translated as Garments to Put on and Take Off by Andrew Hurley). He is the author of the Veveviejo texts, adapted for the theater by Rosa Luisa Márquez and performed by her and himself. He is the subject of Paloma Suau’s prize winning feature documentary film El accidente feliz (2019). Recently awarded the National Medal of Arts by the president of the United States, Joe Biden. In 2023, he received the Special guest and lifetime achievement award at the National Puerto Rican Parade in New York. In 2024 was unveiled the U.S. Representative Nydia Velazquez portrait, being the first Puerto Rican to have his artwork displayed at Capitoll Hill.