SubirachsArt Fundació Catalana Síndrome de DownBiography Josep Maria Subirachs was born in Barcelona 11 March 1927. The work of Subirachs is one of the richest, definitive and most representative of the contemporary Catalan and Spanish art. It is recognised worldwide that his works have marked a step forwards in the modern times of his country. He is the pioneer of Avant Guard sculpture in Catalonia in the second half of the twentieth century. Member of the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, of Barcelona. "Corresponding Member" of the Hispanic Society of America of New York. Holder of the Creu de Sant Jordi of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Medal of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. "Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres" of France. Personnalité de l'Année 1987, an international distinction awarded for his contribution to the world of arts in Paris. Member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando of Madrid. Medalla de Honor awarded by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungria, 2003. Sculptor, designer and engraver. He worked as an apprentice in the studio of E.Monjo (1942-1947) and was a free student in the "Escola de Belles Arts" of Barcelona (1945), but Enric Casanovas (1947-48) was his authentic professor from whom he inherited a style of Mediterranean character inspired by Maillol. At twenty-one years old he carried out his first solo exhibition (1948) at the Casa del Llibre of Barcelona. His stay in Paris (1951) and his later residence in Belgium (1954-1956) contributed to his professional development nad plural knowledge of the plastic arts of the second half of the 20th century. Starting from the fifties his creations obtained a considerable public recognition due to which he received important commissions such as the façade mural of the Town Hall of Barcelona (1969), Monument in México D.F (1968) , the monument to the Olympiads, in Lausanne (1983), the sculptural work on the Passion façade in the Gaudi's Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (starting from the 1986), The Pillars of the Sky in Seoul (1987) and the monument to Francesc Macià (1991) placed in the Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona. He has used all types of materials: terracotta, bronze, wood, iron, stone, asbestos cement, cast concrete, marble, and also glass, aluminium, ivory, steel, rope and, especially in his latest period, has combined pictorial fragments with sculpture. As an engraver he has cultivated etching, lithography, serigraphy, linoleum and drypoint . He has undertaken all manner of work from large group sculptures to medals and even utilitarian elements. He has imposed a new concept of sculpture in Catalonia and is one of the most original sculptors in the world, his work showing very few influences. What characterizes him is his great command of technique and precision of form. In his mature, sober, conceptual work , he has combined elements in tension, often mixing disparate materials, figures in negative, sections turned on a lathe, cornices, seriated sequences, classical elements such as caryatids, sphinxes, capitals, niches, mouldings, obelisks, hydrias, pyramids, balustrades with, at a conceptual level, a certain taste for contrasts, visual paradox, irony and eroticism. He has been the artist who has most consistently and effectively brought the new art to the street, as recovery of the past and future offer. Extensive work expressed in various languages, from classicism of "Noucentism", through informalism to expressionism or of the abstraction to neofigurism, makes Subirachs one of the great creators of art of our time, and his art becomes a synthesis of the current artistic movements, in a complete and harmonic way. | |
