Biography

The inner life of the other.

Martha Escondeur (b. 1957, Santa Lucía, Canelones) is a Uruguayan painter, sculptor, ceramist and draughtswoman who has exhibited continuously since 1972. A child who drew portraits from the age of five and held her first exhibition — and made her first sale — at twelve, she has built a career of more than fifty years around a single pursuit: the human figure, and the inner life of people that is not always visible. Her work reaches from intimate portraiture to monumental religious sculpture, and is held in churches, public spaces and private collections across Uruguay, the Americas and Europe.

Martha Escondeur in her studio
Martha Escondeur in her Montevideo studio

Artistic Philosophy & Style

A story behind each portrait

Escondeur is a figurative artist with a bright, vivid palette that carries optimism and vitality. She is drawn not to "making faces" but to making each work transmit a story — many of her subjects are invented, fictional characters that "take on their own character," grouped into thematic series such as Retratos del Alma, her tango scenes, Pasajeros del tiempo, Millennials and Migrantes. A hallmark of her process: she begins a painting or a sculpture from the subject's right eye — "as if from there I begin to see them."

Though often described as self-taught, she resists the label "autodidacta," which she feels implies a lack of training: barred from the Bellas Artes during the dictatorship years, she taught herself rigorously through reading and long afternoons studying Carlos Federico Sáez and Juan Manuel Blanes in the museums. Her sculpture — in marble, bronze, terracotta, resin and stone — owes a strong debt to Rodin; carving marble, she says, is a matter of "finding within the stone the sculpture that is hidden."

  • Portraiture of the "Other"

    Seeking the interior of people — visible, clear, or subtle — through invented characters in narrative series.

  • Multidisciplinary

    Oil and acrylic with spatula, resin and gold leaf; sculpture in marble, bronze, terracotta and ceramics.

  • Signed "M. Escondeur"

    After a collector balked at a woman's signature, she signed with an initial — letting the work speak for itself.

Public & Religious Works

From the Cathedral of Canelones to the Vatican Gardens

Recognition

Escondeur has received some of Uruguay's principal honors for a life in art: the Premio Ariel a la Trayectoria (Ateneo de Montevideo, 2018) and a Reconocimiento a la Trayectoria from AGADU at the Teatro Solís the same year; and, marking fifty years of career in 2022, she was named Artista Plástica del Año and awarded the Premio Manuel Oribe a la Cultura in painting — the same year her retrospective Diecinueve mil días ("Nineteen Thousand Days") opened at Club del Lago.

"In art, inspiration is one-fifteenth; most of it is work. You have to get up every day and come to the studio as to a job… It's a priesthood. It's a way of life."

Martha Escondeur

Sources & Further Reading