American cowboy and artist
1894-1971
Author: Stephen Brigham
Pete Martinez was born
April 29, 1894 in Porterville, California. His father, Guy Martinez, was a cattle hand from the border region of Mexico. His mother, Josephine Vasquez, was a Californian of Mexican ancestry. Pete and his five siblings lived on a cattle ranch, where his father was a foreman.
In first grade, his fascination with drawing was noticed by a teacher who asked him to draw something in chalk on the blackboard for the class to see. To her astonishment he sketched an impressive panorama of “Custer’s Last Stand,” which delighted his classmates.
In 1915 he enrolled at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco. There he met another young artist, Frederick Robbins (1893-1974).
In 1924 Robbins was attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia and urged Martinez to join him by applying for a scholarship to study at the school. He applied, won, and moved to the East Coast.
The colorful sight of a genuine sunburned cowboy arriving at Union Station in downtown Philadelphia was enough to warrant a newspaper interview. The cowboy artist was quoted as saying, “I can paint horses, for I know them, but I don’t know women. Perhaps some day when I have painted a good horse I will try to paint a woman. I don’t know.”
He studied at the school for three years and was influenced by his etching teacher, Earl Horter (1881-1940).
In 1928 he finished his studies and remained in Philadelphia to work as a freelance artist doing entry-level work drawing pen-and-ink illustrations for Western pulp magazines for five dollars a drawing. While living in the east, Pete augmented his income as a rodeo contestant. He became a top performer in the eastern circuit.
In 1932 while on the Southwestern Rodeo circuit, Martinez performed in the Fiesta del los Vaqueros in Tucson. He met Victoria Kellner (aunt of the baseball pitcher Alex Kellner) and the two married. The couple purchased a small ranch near Prince Road and Tucson Blvd, near the home of Maynard Dixon’s and down the street from the original Ettore DeGrazia Studio. Martinez opened a riding stable and art studio at the ranch.
During the 1960s Martinez and the actor Lee Marvin became friends while carousing in Tucson’s downtown bars. During this time, Martinez painted a mural on the walls of the Hotel Congress bar Tap Room. Subsequently a drop ceiling was added to the bar, covering the mural. The mural remain one of Tucson’s great lost artworks. The Tap Room Bar still features a series of his drawings that depict the cowboy culture of the west.
Pete Martinez died in Tucson at the age of seventy-seven in 1971. His relatives still live on the Martinez/Kellner ranch properties and maintain the artist’s legacy here in RillitoBend.