José Cobo

JOSÉ COBO (Santander, 1958).
Untitled.
Resin.
Provenance: Alejandro Sales Gallery.

José Cobo’s sculptures of crawling children combine realistic modeling with unexpected poses and settings. Often made of epoxy resin, they depict child figures absorbed in their movement, with special attention paid to the body and the folds of the clothing, which take on an almost organic quality. Some are placed directly on the floor, while others seem to move along the walls, altering our perception of gravity and space.

Their meaning is linked to learning and discovering the world through the body. Cobo himself explains that he works on the theme of childhood and the way we begin to understand space and physical reality. From this perspective, crawling can be interpreted as an early form of exploration: the child discovers their surroundings by moving, touching, and experimenting with balance. By transferring these movements to a wall, the sculptor also compels the viewer to reconsider what they understand by “floor,” orientation, and stability. These are, therefore, images of childhood as a process of shaping perception and knowledge. Their apparent familiarity coexists with a sense of strangeness: we recognize the everyday gesture, but its placement transforms the scene into an experience that challenges our usual way of seeing.

Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture, Cobo has developed an international career that has taken him to cities such as Chicago, New York, and Frankfurt, integrating into his artistic language a contemporary sensibility marked by formal synthesis and the tension between figuration and abstraction. His teaching experience at SAIC itself helped consolidate a sculptural practice attentive to both conceptual processes and material experimentation. Recognized with honors such as the Botín Foundation Fellowship (1994), the Cantabria Fine Arts Prize (2014), and the international commission for the permanent installation *Wächter* at Arche Nebra (Germany, 2021), José Cobo currently works out of Santander. José Cobo’s work is represented in collections such as those of the Fundació Vila Casas and the Fran Daurel Foundation in Barcelona, the Botín Foundation in Santander, and the Government of Cantabria’s Colección Norte de Arte Contemporáneo. He has exhibited at galleries such as Juan Silió in Santander and Madrid, 3 Punts in Barcelona, and the Maya Polsky Gallery in Chicago. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Santander and Cantabria (MAS) is presenting his exhibition “Humus,” on view through February 21, 2027. His work also features prominently in public spaces, with sculptures such as “Los raqueros” and the “Monument to the Fire and Reconstruction of 1941” in Santander, “Bañistas,” in Castro Urdiales, “Dos toros” in Madrid, and the installation “Wächter” at Arche Nebra in Germany.