Óscar Martínez Morales was born in a modest family environment. His father was a driver at the National Society of Mines while his mother was raising six children. He attended elementary and high school and since childhood has had a keen interest in literature and the arts. At seventeen, Martínez left for three-year military service from at the end of which he showed first noticeable symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. Between 1975 and 1995, he was committed several times to a psychiatric hospital before returning to his hometown. Here, given the complexity of his illness, he was again hospitalized, this time for good; “it was the last hope of salvation,” he said. In 1999, Martínez developed his famous “Formula of alphabetical and numerical Valence” based on which he creates machines and draws compulsively cells, nuclei, atoms and radios, on laptops, book covers and drawing sheets of different sizes. “I wanted to create something noble that would serve everyone. This mathematical formula is of a high standard. I have invented it to improve and increase computer capacities,” he explains.
For ten years, Martínez has been living in a home attached to a psychiatric hospital with six other chronic patients. He has participated in various workshops: painting, literature, radio and computer.