Miguel Berrocal

MIGUEL ORTIZ BERROCAL (Villanueva de Algaidas, Málaga, 1933 - Antequera, Málaga, 2006)
"Cavallo", 1973.
In collaboration with Bruno Cassinari.
Bronze, copy 645/2000.
Signed and justified.
Attached instruction book.
Measurements: 38 x 35 x 18 cm.

"Cavallo" is a significant work of Miguel Berrocal, result of his collaboration with the painter and sculptor Bruno Cassinari. It is a detachable bronze sculpture, conceived as a technical and expressive object at the same time, where movement, form and internal construction dialogue in a very characteristic way in the artist's production.

Berrocal uses in this piece his famous modular structure, which allows the sculpture to be disassembled and reassembled as if it were a three-dimensional puzzle. The figure represents a dynamic and stylized horse, with a formal treatment that combines the expressiveness of the animal figure with the precision of its internal mechanical assembly. This dual quality -organic and scientific- is one of the most unique features of his work: Berrocal not only sculpts volumes, but also proposes participatory assembly experiences for the viewer.

Within Berrocal's trajectory, Cavallo is located in a period in which the artist was consolidating his language of serial dismountable sculpture in bronze, expanding his concepts of form, space and participation. Unlike more abstract or anthropomorphic forms in other series, here there is a recognizable figure reinterpreted through the logic of fragmentation and internal mechanics.

Berrocal has exhibited in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the United States, received the gold medal of the Bronze of Padua, the grand prize of honor at the Brazil Biennial, and was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. He has sculptures in public places in Korea, Bordeaux, Denmark and Switzerland, as well as in various parts of Spain. He is represented in the Museums of Modern Art in New York and Paris, the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, the National Gallery in Rome and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.