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SCULPTURE
1965-1985: From Figure to Abstraction
During my childhood and adolescence, the sculpture was an essential part of my playtime (see “My child vocations”). Around that time, I learned some traditional techniques, spending my summers from 1965 to 1961 at the Luján Pérez School, where I was taught by the sculptor Abraham Cárdenes. Afterwards, and although my university degree was in Architecture, my artistic training was self-taught. Even so, my creative adventure did not begin until I was 16, and it was not until 1968 that I started the pieces I presented at my first solo exhibition in Madrid (1971).
From 1985: The return to the figure
After a beginning in which the free use of Figurativism derived into Abstraction (see Work from 1965-1985), I recovered the human body as a support with the certainty that it can be the most complex and dense container for the sculptor’s contemporary ideas. Since then, I have been inventing figures with the desire of building myself, as I understand these bodies as a shroud of my own intuitions. However, after leaving behind a stage of more-obvious experimentation, I’ve been aware of entering a high risk zone in which fascination and balance are very difficult to attain and perceive.
Works in progress: Anatomies
I’ve always avoided the study of the correct anatomy of the figure. I’ve preferred working from ignorance, but with the strategy of respecting a certain anatomical logic. Precisely that logic was derived from the use of laminated materials simulating the skin of the figure. However, when I initiated my interest in the skinned body (as a metaphor for the humiliation of beauty) I’ve consulted anatomic models, but always avoiding an obsessive submission. An it is in this atmosphere that I am currently working on my figures.
MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE
I see my doctoral thesis, entitled: “Sculpture as an element of architectural composition: its rules in Italian, French and Spanish treatises“, as the manifesto which has justified and given content to my collaborations in buildings by other architects, who have always respected my approach. However, the motivation for works executed in urban spaces has always been the location.
Architectural sculpture (1984-1997)
When I finished my phD on the use of the Sculpture in Architecture, I met Oscar Tusquets who has since invited me to collaborate as a sculptor on several of his projects. One of the biggest and longest (1984-1997) was that of the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as it consisted of two projects in different locations. Although the collaborations with Tusquets have been numerous, there have also been others very special ones.
Urban sculpture (1983-2000)
Invitations to work in the urban space came frequently for a period of time, followed by silence. Some of the projects did not have any previous conditions, including amongst those: The wall or equilibrium’s tale in Sta Cruz de Tenerife, The seashells in Puerto del Rosario (Fuerteventura), The orator of the Baptist and Le-Ga-Nés in Madrid, etc. But most of the ocassions the invitations had a stipulated subject matter, including the 9 Olympic fountains and the monument Als Sempé in Barcelona, and the monument to Negrín in Las Palmas, etc.