Xavier Medina Campeny

XAVIER MEDINA CAMPENY (Barcelona, 1943).
"Sculptures. Works from 1960 to 2007".
Aluminum sculpture. Exemplary 42/750.
Signed, dated and titled by hand.
Measurements: 34 x 28 x 4,7 cm.

Xavier Medina-Campeny's book of sculptures is, more than a simple catalog, a visual extension of his own artistic language: a work that reflects the tension between classical figuration and contemporary fragmentation.

Xavier Medina Campeny, grandson of the sculptor Josep Campeny and great-grandson of Damià Campeny, is a self-taught sculptor, who evolved his artistic style towards a very personal style. He began studying architecture in Barcelona, but abandoned his studies to start in the world of sculpture. It was during this period that he dedicated himself to this art, with a self-taught training. His long artistic career as a sculptor has led him to work with various techniques and materials. As for his first exhibition, he made it in 1964. After ten years he moved to New York, where he created most of his artistic production. After a few years he returned to Spain to stay. His style is closely related to the avant-garde, more specifically with Dadaism. His mastery of drawing has also helped him to relate organic elements with geometric forms. During the years 1975 to 1989, he developed a plastic language of the human body, being a mixture of the anatomical with geometry, which he himself called "fragmentations". At the time of making these bodies, Medina crumbles, divides and geometrizes the parts of the human body to later rejoin them, in order to highlight some parts that he leaves empty. The work Conversación (1979) reflects and tells us about the contrast between the absent and the present. On the other hand, the work The mirror in Atlantic Ocean, balances the form with the background and works the body without fragmenting it. Medina's work can be related to surrealist proposals. For example, in the group Mimetismo animal (Animal mimicry), human attitudes with ironic expressions can be seen in the animals. Since 2003 there has been a change in the artist's style with respect to the human body, in which he simplifies the forms and transforms them into elongated cylinders that for him are "pieces" with a symbolic meaning. Medina and Campeny's works have been exhibited both in Europe and America, where he has several works in museums and important institutions, such as: Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, MACBA in Barcelona, Pagani Foundation in Legnano, Italy, Everson Museum in Syracuse (USA), Jimmy Carter Library & Museum in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), Bears Foundation in New York (USA), North Carolina Museum of Art (USA), among others.