Sergio Martinez Cifuentes, Chilean with Spanish citizenship, was born in Santiago, Chile on July
7, 1966. As a young boy, his drawings were outstanding, which, together with his
poems and
small musical compositions, began to shape the teenager’s
romantic and existentialist personality.
It is at this stage where he
participated in numerous youth competitions in painting,
obtained
significant awards, which helped him understand the true importance of
his
The distance he established with educational trends and style of Art
school at the local
university, guaranteed his self-training as a
painter. At a first stage, he followed descriptive
realism, showing
great command of forms as well as a contented and elegant dominion
of
colors, landscape being his main theme.
In 1987 he married Lizeth, with whom he made the first portraits and
nudes: hence his encounter
with the human figure became a new challenge,
which bound him in the 90s with the "nude"
world, that would become the
theme that covers almost all of his work.
From year 2000 to 2002, we find a break in his academic formalism,
associated with
the Pre-Rafaelism, giving way to interesting features of
interpretation. He substitutes oil with
acrylic, his fine canvas with
linen textures, but mostly, changes his interest in detail and finish,
for the interest in gestural images and intense light and form. The
subsequent return to oil
and refined painting, draws the experience of
dynamic acrylics perceived in the compositions
and effects of volume and
light, that appear to suppose no difficulty for him.
