Paintings by Martin Kalanda

Martin Kalanda escaped communist Czechoslovakia in 1982 with his family, to live in the golden streets of New York City and suburban Long island. After realizing in 7th grade that universities care little about his middle school accomplishments, he began concentrating more on his daydreams than the cosine of trivial integers. High school days and summer nights were spent coasting through studies and overwhelmed by film schools, until, by what scientists believe was a clerical error, his early admission into Boston University was rejected.

Martin began his first term at Boston University in 1997 at the college of Communications and the School for Visual Arts. In the following years of debauchery,     Censored                                                                                                                                                                                                                   and an abandoned Ford Pinto bought by a roommate for $200 at a thrift store. Martin graduated in 2001, and returned to Manhattan from Europe shortly before September of that year. After bell-hopping and assisting at a failed restaurant, Martin finally began his career as a graphic designer.

Through love and friendship, happiness and tragedy, Martin slowly formed his artwork. Battling New York, ghosts of former friends and the voodoo of exes, Martin works to explore the faces and minds of the people around him. His art emerges from the perpetual flow of the world, filtered and scratched by his perception. He has been greatly influenced by Rembrandt’s bright and vibrant colors, Van Gogh’s social skills, Close’s abstraction, Scorsese’s devotion, Kerouac’s alcoholism, Dylan’s painting, and Homer Simpson’s intellect.
Today, Martin is an award-winning web designer working with clients from a vast array of industries. Martin recently began working on more personal artwork and hopes to share with everyone his view of the cheerfully chaotic world around him.