Nikola Martinoski

Yugoslav artist (1903–1973)

Nikola Martinoski (born Nicolache Martin; , ; 18 August 1903 – 7 February 1973), sometimes spelled Martinovski (, ), was a Macedonian Yugoslav painter of Aromanian ethnicity. He is considered as a founder of contemporary Macedonian art. Martinoski is best known for his painting titled Mother with Child, which, although first created in the 1930s, was not completed until the 1960s. He is also known as "The Doctor" for the many paintings he donated to modern art.

Martinoski was born Nicolache Martin in 1903 to an Aromanian family in Kruševo (; at the time part of the Ottoman Empire). He developed an interest in painting at a young age and attended art classes in the workshop of Dimitar Andonov Papradinski, an icon painter in Skopje. Prior to 1921, he was constantly on the move. Finally, Nikola settled down in Bucharest, Romania and attended the Academy of Fine Arts, now known as the Bucharest National University of Arts, from which he graduated in 1927.

Martinoski spent two years (1927–1928) in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which is famous for former students Amedeo Modigliani and Boris Anrep and the Académie Ranson with artists like the Polish painter Moise Kisling and Roger Bissiere, who acted as mentors. This period had a major impact on his life and style as a painter.

In 2003, the National Gallery of Macedonia completed the project "100 years from Martinoski's birth". The exhibition featured paintings that had never been publicly shown before because they were part of 116 paintings that Martinoski left to his family in a nondescript box.

Many of Martinoski's works were greatly influenced by medieval fresco art and modern Parisian school crisscross. However, his strongest artistic creations were portraits.