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Raymond Martinez was born in Barry. He studied Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art followed by the Slade School of Fine Art in London where he won first prizes for both landscape and figure painting.  In his post graduate year at the Slade, he won the Abbey Major Scholarship to The British School in Rome. The work he produced there resulted in The Gulbenkian Foundation Award and led to regular exhibitions at the Lefevre Gallery in London until 1977.