Xavier Timoteo Martínez (February 7, 1869 – January 13, 1943) was a Mexican-born American artist active in California the late 19th and early 20th century.

He was a well-known bohemian figure in San Francisco, the East Bay, and the Monterey Peninsula and one of the co-founders of two California artists' organizations and an art gallery.

[1] He was originally christened Javier Timoteo Martínez y Orozco, but later called himself Xavier Tizoc Martinez, the middle name acknowledging his Purépecha heritage.

At age 13 he began attending the Liceo de Varones (Grammar School for Men), where he studied pre-Columbian archaeology and his TaPurépechaascan heritage.

[3] When Alexander Coney was appointed Consul-General of Mexico and posted to in San Francisco in 1886, Martinez followed them, sailing through the Golden Gate in 1893.

In 1900 he entered the Academy of Eugène Carrière and his Portrait of Miss Marion Holden – a Tonalist work similar to Whistler's Mother – won an honorable mention in the Mexican display at the Paris International Exposition.

[1][2] In 1901 he moved back to San Francisco, he shared an art studio with Gottardo Piazzoni and that year became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

[2] In 1904 he began sharing his Montgomery Street atelier with Maynard Dixon; they held joint studio shows on Saturdays.

Upon his return to San Francisco he held a number of exhibitions, and also gave one show in New York, emphasizing the recent Mexican genre paintings.

[citation needed] That year he produced a painting a critic called a "masterpiece," given the title The Prayer of the Earth by his poet friend George Sterling.

[9] He began teaching as a substitute drawing teacher in June 1909 at the California School of Arts and Crafts (CSAC) in Berkeley.

Also in 1913 he made a painting trip to the Arizona desert with Francis McComas (painter), which abruptly ended with much animosity and negative publicity in the press.

Martinez was selected in 1940 to represent California in the Hall of Fame at the World's Fair of 1940 in New York as one of three (along with Father Junipero Serra and William Keith).

He published poetry and philosophic writings in a column entitled "Notas de un Chichimeca" in the Hispano-Americano, San Francisco's Spanish-language newspaper.