Jaume Plensa

JAUME PLENSA (Barcelona, 1955).
"Cap", 1989.
Wrought iron.
Work published in an article in La Vanguardia Cultura entitled "La escultura en los años 80", January 31, 1989.
Work published in "Jaume Plensa. Sculptures et Dessins", Musee St. Pierre, Lyon, 1988.
Measurements: 96 x 40 x 60 cm.

The sculpture "Head" (1989) by Jaume Plensa is part of a particularly introspective moment in his career, when the artist begins to explore more intensely the idea of the body as a receptacle of memory, and art as an act of rescue in the face of existential shipwreck. Made of wrought iron, "Head" is not a literal anatomical representation, but a symbolic synthesis. Its oval shape, closed, almost armored, and its tail that refers to an armadillo (an animal associated with defense and containment) suggest an armored being, withdrawn, as if it were protecting itself from the outside world. The use of iron, a heavy, industrial material, but malleable with fire and hammer, reinforces that sense of an identity forged between trauma and resistance. When Plensa speaks of the works he made during this period as the remains of a shipwreck, he introduces a poetic reading: the sculptor becomes an archaeologist of the soul, a tracker of vestiges in the collective subconscious. The "Head", in its hermeticism and evocation of primary forms, is a symbol of this attempt to understand the world from the fragment, from what remains. Plensa calls "floating meanings" to the open intention of this and other sculptures of the period: not to impose a story but to invite the viewer to build his own from intuition and emotion. "Head" is a valuable piece, deeply coherent with Plensa's sensibility in the 1980s, and one that occupies a prominent place in his vision of art as a space of reparation and mystery.

Jaume Plensa studied at the Escuela de la Llotja and the Superior de Bellas Artes de Sant Jordi, both in Barcelona. He excelled in sculpture, drawing and engraving. His work focuses on the relationship between man and his environment, often questioning the role of art in society and the position of the artist. He currently resides in Paris, and has recently been awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had solo and group exhibitions all over the world, including a retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2000. In June 2008 he inaugurated in London, at the BBC headquarters, his work "Breathing", a monument dedicated to journalists killed in the exercise of their profession. Throughout his career he has received numerous distinctions, such as the Medal of the Knights of Arts and Letters in 1993, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture, or the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1997, from the Generalitat of Catalonia. Considered one of the leading representatives of the new Spanish art of expressionist tendency, his work is present in the best national and international galleries and art fairs, as well as in the main museums of Europe and the United States, such as the MOMA in New York, the Kemper in Kansas, the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Palazzo Forti in Verona, the MACBA or the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.