Pablo Atchugarry Dancing with the Marble

PABLO ATCHUGARRY DANCING WITH THE MARBLE 1 PABLO ATCHUGARRY DANCING WITH THE MARBLE 4 - 20 OCTOBER 2019 2 4 5 Preface Opera Gallery New York is proud to present, for the first time in our Madison Avenue space, renowned Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Atchugarry. Atchugarry made his mark as a representative of his country at the 50th Venice Biennale and has now reached international fame and recognition for his spectacular production of monumental sculptures, which can be admired in many public spaces both in Europe and America. His passion and aptitude for working with weight, volume, matter, tone and color began early on, following numerous trips to Europe in the late 1970s, particularly in Spain, France and Italy. Atchugarry’s decisive discovery of marble in 1979 and the visit to Cava del Polvaccio – known as Michelangelo’s marble quarry – fundamentally impacted the formation of his artistic career. La Pietà, the artist’s first monumental project carved in Carrara marble, was made between 1982 and 1983 and drew direct inspiration from the quality of light found in Italy. Until then, the artist experimented with using different materials to create his abstract sculptures including wood, steel, bronze, iron and cement. However, marble, with its singular sinuosity and elegance, particularly mesmerized him. Inspired by the lessons and legacy of Michelangelo, Atchugarry carved the stone block, following its veins, to free the form trapped inside the material, revealing its most intimate nature, its immaterial soul, raising it towards the infinite. Atchugarry’s artistic language, inspired by archetypes of Classical, Renaissance and Baroque statuary, has developed and expanded further into contemporary abstract forms. A harmonious aesthetic which opens out into delicate ascending compositions, utilizing the soft and translucent characteristics of marble and the most brilliant and decisive, graphic quality of painted bronze. It is with great enthusiasm that Opera Gallery New York presents this carefully curated selection of works by Pablo Atchugarry and a privilege to showcase this internationally significant artist standing at the cornerstone of the global art scene. Gilles Dyan Gregory Lahmi Chairman and Founder Director Opera Gallery Group Opera Gallery New York 6 7 Conquering the Light impression Atchugarry gives is one and that of nature itself. The result is of incessant search for the infinite a design with a highly plastic quality, Luciano Caprile on the part of the unfinished, on which directs modulated tangles of the impermanence which is part of thoughts upwards, volutes of aerial our human condition and which he elicitations, mute and persuasive lifted up to heaven like a prayer, tactile invocations diffusing a The desire to take the idea by which and embraces of lines, avoiding all a constant and faintly magical suspended and surprising release the artist was originally seduced limitation of movement and space. longing that will only dissolve in the of energy. The artist’s hand thus and translate it into an appropriate The effect of lightness created by presence of the mystery. becomes the ultimate caress that form continues to haunt and motivate the white cloud of dust that usually accompanies the impassioned quest him with each challenge he takes accompanies his work as he follows The tribute of Genoa’s Palazza Ducale characterizing all of Atchugarry’s on. Pablo Atchugarry has always his intuition is a tribute to the eternal to the Uruguayan artist reveals this compositional impulses: light, the pursued and achieved what to many concept of harmony. In this way longing, this desire for the sublime focal point and cornerstone of this of his colleagues is hardly less than the artist places himself outside elevation of both substance and our exhibition, to aspire to and reach utopian, since his ideas so often take time, pursuing an inner process of soul. It is not coincidental, in fact, gradually, step by step. Atchugarry root and develop in the very act of classicism that leads him to create that standing on the ground floor of himself seems to adopt a gesture standing before a block of marble as a movement of forms evoking the the large entrance hall is an old olive that is never conclusive but rather it is probed and coaxed into revealing ancient Greek-Roman draperies tree, long dried out, which the artist emblematically liberating. In keeping its secret. Atchugarry has no need that were revived in the 17th century. recovered and used to interpret our with Marcel Duchamp’s provocative for preliminary sketches; a few lines What this actually is, however, is an existential angst through a tangle of statement “the creative act is not drawn on the stone are enough to set impromptu suggestion overtaken branches and roots that are part of performed by the artist alone”, in him on the path that he will follow, by the abstract development of his its nature. Atchugarry retraces its fact, Atchugarry prefers to leave prompted by clues from the stone work, concluding in a perpetual dramatic history by exploring and plenty of room to the sensitivity of the itself and guided by the resulting appeal to the imperceptible. For this following its lines, carving his own observer, who is thus given both the revelations. The material itself, in fact, reason these compositions give the idea from the very essence of the pleasure and the duty of an ideal and seems to enter into a sort of exquisite impression of pursuing a constant tree, entering into a symbiosis with personal completeness. exchange with the artist to show him enigma. They challenge the observer nature’s design and completing the path he must follow in order to not only to contemplate the palpable its gesture in plastic harmony with This wood sculpture, entitled La win its soul. And also to emphasize eurythmy on display but also to the same. In this case, in fact, the danza de la vida (The Dance of the poetic becoming, captured in the question what lies beneath the gestures of the artist are so finely Life), is a prologue to the rhythmic, endless instant of its ostension. Thus culmination of every work and every tuned that it is difficult to distinguish compelling story that unfolds on the material slides upwards in scrolls closer observation. This is why the between his own creative process the upper floor, beyond the double 8 9 staircase, in the large, impressive aspiration that may be resolved in a Salone del Maggior Consiglio. compositional structure that finds its The hall, redesigned in the 18th true expression in the supple marble century in neoclassical style, hasAtchugarry an opened the Fundacióncrescendo Pablo Atchugarry set in the sacredness of in 2007 in Manantiales, Uruguay where sculptures extraordinarily lofty atmospherefrom with his career inhabit aa public hypothetical, sculpture park. majestic altar. In this a crescendo of emotions arousedThe space is also a museumway, andAtchugarry’s space for works restore a by the marble and painted bronzepedagogy around sculpturesdimension and his practice. that is not only classical sculptures installed by Atchugarry,Atchugarry, along with hisor work,baroque is constantly or informal, but simply involved in internationally projects that are within which create an ascending rhythmthe purview of the public andand is subtlyalways pursuing reserved for those special of forms. The resulting effect ismonumentality. Repetition placesis gathered thatand erased are able to accommodate an evocative exchange betweenthrough constant acts of experimentationthem. And in stonewhere the light takes on the articulate, diverse presenceand of his visual achievementthe of vertical valued space. role The of guide and haven for negative space is hazy and ambiguous around his statues, chandeliers and decorations.sculptures. the innermost, unfathomable thought At this point, Pablo’s ‘Classicism’ of the artist. plays a decisive role in mergingBorn in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1954, Pablo Atchugarry his idea with that of the setting livesin between Lecco in Italy and Manantiales in Uruguay. He is one of the last sculptors to use the which it is expressed. This wasmodernist also language in his work. Between abstraction the case at the Mercati di Traianoand lyricism, Atchugarry works the stone and revisits in Rome in 2015 where, reflectedsculpture. His most unique works are present in numerous prestigious collections (Patricia and Phillip in the artist’s work, the time-worn Frost Art Collection in Miami, Museo Nacional de reality of the museum’s ancient,Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires or Museo Coleção historical vestiges was revived Berardoand in Lisbon) definitely makes Pablo Atchugarry unearthed again to be admireda rare artist on the contemporary art scene. by the public. Today, on the other hand, Atchugarry focuses his artistic contribution on enhancing and harmonising a whole room, ideally designed without visual boundaries. In the very heart of Genoa’s Palazzo The Light of South, 2013 Carrara marble Ducale the artist’s quest to conquer Unique piece the light becomes therefore a shared 177.1 x 60.6 x 32.3 in - 450 x 154 x 82 cm Private collection, Brazil THE LIGHT OF SOUTH, 2013 Carrara marble, unique piece 450 x 154 x 82 cm | 177.1 x 60.6 x 32.3 in Private collection, Brazil 10 11 36 37 Dancing with the Marble, 2019 Statuary Carrara marble Unique piece 52 x 13 x 10.2 in | 132 x 33 x 26 cm Provenance Artist's studio 13 Untitled, 2019 Statuary Carrara marble Unique piece 19.3 x 10.6 x 5.3 in | 49 x 27 x 13.5 cm Provenance Artist's studio 14 Untitled,

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