Martinoman
Riwnyj
Argentinan Artist
About Martin
The Argentine painter and draftsman Martín Riwnyj died in August 2025. What he left behind are images that don’t hand you everything at once scenes that look like they were pulled from a film or an old photograph, with a light and a quiet that linger long after you’ve looked at them. He spent years building exactly that: paintings where memory, time, and atmosphere come together to leave you in a kind of pause, as if time had stopped for a second.
What makes his painting different is where that feeling comes from. Riwnyj was as deep into film as he was into painting, and it shows in everything the way a composition is built, the use of light, what gets left outside the frame. There are things he hints at without ever showing them, and that’s exactly the part that pulls you in. Over time his work grew quieter and more pared down fewer elements, more air, more trust in what light and emptiness can say on their own.
The way he worked was more about intuition than concept. A lot of his paintings started from images that piled up over time an everyday scene, a fragment of a film, a photograph, a memory and the painting would find its shape slowly, as unexpected relationships appeared between color, light, and space. He was protective of that internal timing; he had no interest in a painting being a quick answer to whatever was in fashion.
Living with one of his pieces is a relationship that keeps shifting. The work doesn’t run out on the first look depending on the day, and on where you are when you look at it, it shows you something different. It’s better in calm rooms, with good natural light and a bit of privacy; it isn’t made to walk past, it’s made to sit with. The first time you see it, what tends to happen is a strange sense of suspension like stepping into a scene that feels familiar but holds something you can’t quite name.
Which is why it connects most with people who know how to look slowly who enjoy a slow, slightly introspective relationship with a painting. Riwnyj came out of the Argentine figurative tradition and showed his work for decades, between Buenos Aires, Rome, and cities across Europe and Latin America. What he wanted was simple: for an image to still be a space of quiet and memory. His paintings still are.