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Enrique Martínez Celaya’s work revives and reinterprets the classic Western metaphysical tradition that relates aesthetics to ethics, the Beautiful to the Good and the True. His aesthetic project embodies his belief that being a certain kind of artist means being a certain kind of person and that it is in and through art that he gains clarity about himself and his relationship to the world.

Curator Daniel A. Siedell, who has worked with Martínez Celaya on several projects, offers a radical commentary on his work. He argues that Martínez Celaya’s ambitious and expansive project is best understood as an embodiment of a religious Weltanschauung. It is a search for that most elusive of religious virtues, hope. Art critic Thomas McEvilley, who is a philologist by training and writes about art, philosophy and religion, explores how Martínez Celaya has combined Germanic feeling with a surrealist plastic vocabulary to “present a world.” Literary critic and Paul Celan scholar John Felstiner traces, ever so lightly, the contours of an aesthetic lineage that includes Goya, Eliot, Celan and Beethoven. Former Washington Post journalist and Hollywood producer and writer Christian  Williams crafts a powerful account of Martínez Celaya’s life, a life that has become intimately entwined with his own.

With the artist’s collaboration in the compilation of images as well as his notes, which illuminate the depth of his engagement, Early Work is an intimate examination of a profound aesthetic project.