Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art was established in 1982, in a townhouse in historic Amster Yard on 49th Street in New York City. The gallery was founded by Mary-Anne Martin, who had created the Latin American Department at Sotheby’s in the late 1970’s. Dedicated to the promotion of Modern Mexican and Latin American art, the gallery showcases works by major artists of Latin America such as Carrington, Covarrubias, Goeritz, Izquierdo, Kahlo, Lam, Matta, Mérida, Orozco, Rahon, Rivera, Siqueiros, Tamayo, Toledo and Torres-Garcia, and Varo. The gallery has also represented contemporary artists Isabel De Obaldía and Elena Climent.
In 1986 the gallery moved to 23 East 73rd Street, a landmarked Beaux-Arts townhouse, which housed the gallery’s main exhibition space as well as its renowned library and archive. The gallery has long been a “must” for serious collectors of Latin American Art as well as a first stop for new collectors who wish to learn about the field from mam|fa’s knowledgeable and friendly staff. The gallery consults for museums, auction houses and private collectors. In 2024, the gallery closed its exhibition space to transition into a research consultancy and private dealership.
Known for its good taste, expertise and scholarship, since 1982, Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art has contributed to the passage of Latin American art from an esoteric specialty to an international market.
Mary-Anne Martin is one of the leading dealers of Latin American art in the United States. She single-handedly created the auction market for Latin American paintings during her years at Sotheby’s. As an independent gallery owner she has bought and sold some of the most well known examples of Latin American painting by masters like Tamayo, Rivera, Lam, Matta, and others. Her acquisition of Frida Kahlo’s 1949 “Diego y yo” set the record for a Latin American purchase. She has promoted the art of many younger artists and has given the first U.S. showing to painters like Nahum Zenil, José Luis Romo, Elena Climent, and numerous others.
Edward Sullivan, Latin American Art, 1990
People of MAMFA
Client Services
Consignments and Acquisitions
For over 40 years, Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art has worked with private collectors looking to consign and sell artworks or to acquire important works for their collections. Because of Mary-Anne Martin’s pivotal position in creating the Latin American art market in this country in the 1970’s, the gallery has access to private collections around the world and firsthand knowledge of the whereabouts of important artworks.
Through consignment to an art gallery, a collector can take advantage of sales experience and expertise and still be assured of receiving the highest possible return. As opposed to selling a work through an auction house, the artwork is handled discreetly and offered only to the collectors most likely to buy. For this reason the work is not burned on the open market if it is not sold and maintains a higher degree of confidentiality.
For those looking to purchase art, mam|fa is known for its honest advice and long-term client relationships built on trust. An art collection makes a statement about the collector’s eye, interests, and taste. It is very important for collectors to develop strong relationships with art dealers who understand their taste and motivation. The art dealer in turn can recommend new artists or works consistent with a collection’s purpose and aesthetics.
Auction advisory services
Once a forum for wholesale purchases by dealers acquiring stock, auctions have now become a retail, do-it-yourself occupation, open to everyone. But everyone does not have the specialized professional knowledge needed for buying expensive art at auction and doing it yourself can have some pitfalls. Some of the biggest traps an unwary auction goer can fall into are set forth in one of our newsletter articles Thirteen Questions. Excerpts from this article have been reprinted in a number of trade magazines and business journals.
A smart collector will seek advice from professionals when considering an auction purchase. Dealers are practiced auction buyers and can offer advice through physical examination of the artwork, provenance research, and market knowledge.
Museum Services
Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art has traditionally been an important resource for museum curators planning to acquire or exhibit Mexican and Latin American art. We have helped museums across the world locate privately held works for exhibitions, and in many cases the gallery has acted as the lender’s agent with the museum, thus preserving the collector’s privacy while enabling the public to view a work that would otherwise have remained hidden away. We are frequently called upon to negotiate the terms of loans with collectors, and to provide insurance appraisals for artworks being lent to museums by collectors or by another institution.
Since the founding of mam|fa, Mary-Anne Martin has acted as the special advisor to a number of prestigious shows, among them Diego Rivera, the Cubist Years, at the Phoenix Art Museum and IBM Gallery, NY in 1984, the Diego Rivera Retrospective traveling show organized in 1985 by the Detroit Institute of Arts, the 1988 Tamayo exhibition organized by the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Frida Kahlo traveling exhibition held in Tokyo by Seibu in 1989, Mexico, Splendors of Thirty Centuries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1990, Mexican Renaissance (Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros) at Nagoya City (Japan) Art Museum in 1989 and the Rufino Tamayo Retrospective organized by Nagoya in 1993, the Leonora Carrington exhibition for 1997 and 1998 by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper organization and the Frida Kahlo retrospective exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. More recently, mam|fa consulted for Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910 – 1950 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In recent years, mam|fa has focused on helping museums acquire artworks for their permanent collections. Within the United States, institutions have put increasing importance on expanding their collections to include more work by Mexican and Latin American artists. The gallery greatly enjoys building relationships with curators and is proud to have placed important works in institutional collections including:
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
de Young Museum, San Francisco
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Dallas Museum of Art
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth
The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Colección FEMSA, Mexico