Maria Martins

Brazilian visual artist who was particularly well known for her modern sculptures. Indeed, Martins is known internationally as “the sculptor of the tropics” and “the great sculptor of Surrealism”. Also a drawer, engraver, painter, writer and musician, Martins was one of the most influential surrealists in Brazil, and is sometimes called “the Brazilian Frida Kahlo”.

Her first husband was a literary critic named Otavio Tarquinio de Souza, with whom she had a daughter, Lucia maria. However, when she married the young diplomat Carlos Martins in 1926 she changed her name to Maria Martins.

Martins had an affair with the French artist Marcel Duchamp, which lasted for several years from 1946 onwards, ending with her departure for Brazil in 1951 and with his 1954 marriage to his second wife Alexina Duchamp. In 2009, members of Martins's family released letters written by Duchamp and Martins that substantiated previous claims that Martins was indeed the model for the nude figure in Duchamp's final masterpiece, the Étant donnés, as opposed to his wife Teeny. It is now widely acknowledged that Martins was the model for the reclining nude torso in Duchamp's installation piece and that his wife Alexina (Teeny) served only as the model for the figure's arms.

Maria Martins died on 27 March 1973 at age 78 in Rio de Janeiro.