Montse Martín

Montse Martín was born in Lleida into a family linked to art and sports. With 14 years she will be part of the Spanish rhythmic gymnastics team, becoming world champion in Athens (Greece, 1991) and European champion in Stuttgart (Germany, 1992).

After retiring from gymnastics, she studied graphic design at the IDEP school in Barcelona. She works for five years for the advertising agency ADOS Comunicación, until she decides to start, self-taught, in the field of painting, developing a wide collection of female portraits, entitled “All women …”. A series of fetishistic faces, in acrylic on wood, with influences from Pop Art, Comic, and Advertising.

“I am still a bit of a fetishist with women in general, whether they are actresses, gymnasts, mothers, or my neighbor the florist, to whom I often grant extraordinary virtues.”

The arrival of motherhood in her life makes her work more personal and poetic, welcoming the illustration with pencils and watercolors, and the representation of the female body as a tool of maximum freedom of expression through dance.

She has developed different editorial projects as a designer and illustrator for the Penguin Random House publishing group, such as the series of stories Olympia, based on the sports life of the gymnast Almudena Cid, with great reception among children and young audiences or El Diario de Lola, by bestselling author Elísabet Benavent, among others.

In a nostalgic return to the athletic roots of her youth, she created Pinceladas de Rítmica, a tribute book to Rhythmic Gymnastics through the illustrated portraits of the best gymnasts in history. A debt and a declaration of love that she penned with her brother, the professional musician and expert rhythmic gymnastics consultant, Manuel Martín.