Manuel Martín Nieto

MANUEL MARTÍN NIETO (Morón de la Frontera, 1978).
"Pietà".
Cedar wood carving, polychrome.
Measurements: 160 x 140 x 80 cm.

The virtuosity of Manuel Martín Nieto is evident in this subjugating scene of the Pietà. The exanimated body and the thin face of Christ expresses in each portion of skin its history of suffering and forgiveness. The Virgin, in turn, seems to come to life before our astonished eyes because of the unsurpassed workmanship and the neo-baroque pathos it conveys. Sculptor with a workshop in the Sevillian town of Morón de la Frontera with more than 20 years of experience in religious and profane sculpture. Since his childhood he excelled in drawing and with only 13 years he was apprenticed to the great carver Manuel Guzman Bejarano. Later he received the teachings of Manuel Hernández León and José Antonio Navarra Arteaga, the latter being the one who most influenced my works.Manuel Martín Nieto is one of the most responsible for the intense naturalistic outbreak that characterizes the evolution and brilliant transformation of the Andalusian neo-baroque sculpture in the first two decades of the XXI century. Established in Morón de la Frontera, his activity is projected throughout Andalusia and much of Spain, with notes of quality that distinguish and endorse him in the large group of great Sevillian sculptors of our time. His material training in the workshops of Manuel Guzmán Bejarano, Manuel Hernández León and José Antonio Navarro Arteaga, gave him a solid mastery of the craft, an essential condition for the development of a personal style and mastery to which he has reached after two decades of uninterrupted work. With them he was initiated in the neo-baroque aesthetics, to which he has always shown a deep appreciation; however, several factors distinguish him from his masters and related contemporary sculptors. In a strict sense of the neo-baroque concept of sculpture, we must highlight Manuel Martín Nieto's interest in references outside the Sevillian context, such as the great Castilian sculptor Luis Salvador Carmona, a decision that distinguishes him from all his contemporaries and only has the antecedent of Antonio Eslava Rubio, one of whose models was Francisco Salzillo. This breadth of vision within the parameters set by the neo-baroque movement is uncommon and is a characteristic note that defines it.