Comments (0) Best Solo Exhibition - 2010

"An Unfinished Conversation: Collecting Enrique Martínez Celaya," Boca Raton Museum of Art

Just last year, we were welcoming Enrique Martínez Celaya back to South Florida, the artist having decamped from his Delray Beach studio a year earlier and moved back to Los Angeles. But who would have guessed that the itinerant painter, philosopher, photographer, poet, and publisher — he was born in Cuba, grew up in Spain and Puerto Rico, teaches in Colorado and Nebraska, and has shown all over the world — would make a comeback as dramatic as this one-man show? For years, Martínez Celaya has steadily produced some of the most intellectually rigorous art of his generation (he's still in his 40s). With this, his most extensive South Florida exhibition since "The October Cycle" at the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale in 2004, he proved he still has few equals. Although the show included only 19 works, the Boca Museum wisely gave it most of the first floor, and the often-monumental pieces commanded the space with grace and authority. The kicker: The works are all from a private collection, that of filmmaker Martin Brest. Envy was never so easy.