Her initial education was in music at a French school in Rio de Janeiro, pursuing a career as a professional musician.

[5] This sculptural interest evolved to Surrealism, exploration of her Brazilian - Amazonian roots, and bronze casting under the teaching of Jacques Lipchitz.

[5] Martins' association with the 1940s expatriate artist community in New York helped formulate her view on art’s political power.

[4] These views on art, its role in peace, and the responsibility of artists is articulated in an essay that was read into the U.S. congressional record on June 18, 1947 by Congressman Jacob Javits of New York.

[6] In the essay, titled Art, Liberation and Peace, she describes a world in which differences of race, nationalities, religions, social conditions and opinions are freely discussed, thereby negating the impacts of politics and wealth.

[3] Martins later bought Mondrian's famous work from the exhibition, Broadway Boogie Woogie, for only $800, though she eventually donated it to the Museum of Modern Art.

Martins was completely marginalized in accounts of Surrealism for decades, despite her sculpture being included in a number of surrealist exhibitions and publications and the prominent role she played in the movement during the 1940s.

Example of this can be seen in works like her 1942 sculpture “Yara,” inspired by the Tupi or Guarani Indian myth of a man-eating river goddess.

Yara would sing her song of seduction to passing men enticing them to visit her jungle domain where she would devour them, like an insect in a Venus flytrap.

Here, Breton connected Maria’s interest in the mythology of the Amazon River with his own desire to create new myths to base a future society on.

Just as it sang with all its immemorial voices man’s passion from birth to death, re-created in symbols of unparalleled denseness by the Indian tribes which have succeeded each other along those treacherous banks.

In her bronzes...Maria has succeeded marvelously in capturing at their primitive source not only anguish, temptation and fever, but also the sunrise, happiness and calm, and even occasionally pure delight; she is the emanation of all these things, all these wings and flowers.