The Neighborhood News Online

Leticia Martinez

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Category: Art

Published on Thursday, 18 February 2010 20:31

Written by Carla Weber

Living off the Washington Corridor, smack in the middle of beautiful Mid-City, Leticia Martinez is a true Los Angeleno and artist.  Daughter of Mexican immigrants, sister to the barrio and wife to our last-interviewed artist for “The Neighborhood News,” Brazilian Bakari Santos.
Leticia has succeeded in melding the multi-cultural influences around her with a distinctive visual point of view, revealing a commitment to “reverse the assimilation”, and to honor her ethnicity.   I was particularly struck with the altars that Martinez has erected in her home. Altars have stormed through our culture at neck-breaking speed, embraced by many for the immediacy they speak to: the celebration of life that death paradoxically has to offer. 
Currently Martinez is participating in a group show entitled,  “The Feminine Mystic”, displayed at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles until the end of February.  Two of her ‘retablos’, a devotional painting typically done on a slab of thin wood, metal or tin, grace the walls of this exhibition.  Retablos attempt to pay homage, gratitude and grace to the gods for manifesting good fortune such as abundant rain, flourishing crops and health.

They come from a primal need humans have to interact on a personal level with the spiritual world. Sometimes a painted image does reflect the miracle between the divine and the artist. Something Martinez has clearly accomplished.

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