Barry Martin was born in 1943 and studied at Goldsmith's College School of Art (1961-66) and St Martins School of Art (1966-67).
He has had numerous one person exhibitions over the past four decades, including the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Goya Gallery, Spain; the Mashomac, USA; Olympia, London (1999); Riverside Studios (2000); the Galerijo Rigo, Croatia (2003); the Zest Gallery (2004); and The Drawing Gallery (2004).
His work is included in many major public and private collections including: The Tate Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Government Art Collections, British Council Collections, The Henry Moore Collection, Leeds; Arts Council England, Northern Arts Association; University of London, Goldsmiths College; CIty University, and the Deutschbank Collection.
Barry Martin's Grand Master Portraits is a photographic portfolio, limited to an edition of 25, of some of the world’s leading chess players, including world champions, both old and new. The majority were taken at the 7th ‘Howard Staunton Memorial Chess Tournament’ held at Simpson’s-in-the- Strand, London in 2009. This was, up to that point, the highest rated chess tournament held in the United Kingdom for twenty five years. Others were taken at the impressive Spanish tournament held in Bilbao in 2008, where most of the top ten chess players in the world competed.
All of the images were taken by Barry Martin, except for those of Jon Speelman GM and Raymond Keene OBE, GM, which were in collaboration with Bob Miller. The portraits of Garry Kasparov GM and Anatoly Karpov GM were taken in London, 2010, during the latter’s world tour in the run-up to the FIDE presidential elections.
The Grand Masters featured are: Garry Kasparov, Vesselin Topalov, Lev Aronian, Michael Adams, Jan Hendrik Timman, Viswanathan Annad, Ivan Sokolov, Susan Polgar, Jonathan Speelman, Vasyl Ivanchuck, Nigel Short, Anatoly Karpov, Leontxo Garcia Olasagasti, Magnus Carlsen,Viktor Korchnoi, Raymond Keen and Teimour Radjabov.