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Lot Essay
A resounding throwback to centuries-long traditions of sculpture, Atchugarry stands today among the most sensitive contemporary interpreters of volumetric forms and white Carrara marble. Born in Montevideo but nurtured on the placid shores of Italy's Lake Como since the late 1970s, Atchugarry has cultivated an artistic practice deeply rooted in the most essential, plastic values of sculpture--light, surface, texture, form. The vitality of his sculptures belies the sheer physicality of their often-monumental forms, which take on extraordinary qualities of weightlessness and transcendence. The visual poetics of his sculpture suggest rich metaphysical themes, and Atchugarry thoughtfully considers his work as an "aspiration toward an ideal," ascending perpetually upward toward "limitless horizons." "There is always a vertical stress in my works," he explains. "All these vertical works of mine, all those points, are nothing but invocations, a questioning, a going forth to see the stars, to hear them take part in our lives. Like a prayer, an invocation to the infinite."(1)
The classical aesthetics and universality of Atchugarry's works situate his practice within a storied lineage of sculptors, and he has embraced an art-historical inheritance that stretches from Michelangelo--"I don't know which came first, my love of marble or Michelangelo"--to the modernist masters Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, and Jean Arp. Atchugarry's choice to work principally in marble, what he considers "the epitome of the classical material," dates to his first stay in Carrara in 1979, when the revelation of its stone quarries transformed his practice.(2) His reverence for marble and for the work of its past interlocutors have powerfully enriched his own practice, and he has plumbed the expressive depths of this chosen medium in works that image art's most ideal and archetypal values.
The rippling surface and luminous materiality of the present sculpture evoke the harmonious plastic rhythms and evolved, free flowing lines that Atchugarry has refined over the past three decades. Here, the movement of draped folds around three elliptical voids creates a dramatic sensation of movement in the round, as the forms spiral upward and outward around an integral, yet open center. The suggestively metamorphic quality and fluid dynamism of his forms may even recall the Italian baroque tradition in the brilliant play of light and shadow across undulating marble surfaces. "The receding cascades of varying depth and the network of stereometric patterns create a dynamic labyrinth of shades that, together with the highly polished surfaces create a structure of reflection and absorption of light that parallels the flowing textures of Bernini's figures," curator Till-Holger Borchert has noted. "Even Atchugarry's most abstract works have a remarkable affinity to baroque sculpture, underlying once again the artist's deep involvement with tradition."(3) The moving eloquence of the present work suggests a sublime meditation on the baroque tradition and, no less, a consummate expression of Atchugarry's aesthetics in its lyricism and poetic grace.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park.
1) P. Atchugarry, "Fragments of Life: A Conversation with Valeria Campagni," Pablo Atchugarry: A Journey Between Matter and Light, Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2006, 128-29, 251.
2) Ibid., 54, 247.
3) T-H. Borchert, "Between Material and Immaterial, Amidst History and the Present," Pablo Atchugarry: A Journey between Matter and Light, 16.
The classical aesthetics and universality of Atchugarry's works situate his practice within a storied lineage of sculptors, and he has embraced an art-historical inheritance that stretches from Michelangelo--"I don't know which came first, my love of marble or Michelangelo"--to the modernist masters Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, and Jean Arp. Atchugarry's choice to work principally in marble, what he considers "the epitome of the classical material," dates to his first stay in Carrara in 1979, when the revelation of its stone quarries transformed his practice.(2) His reverence for marble and for the work of its past interlocutors have powerfully enriched his own practice, and he has plumbed the expressive depths of this chosen medium in works that image art's most ideal and archetypal values.
The rippling surface and luminous materiality of the present sculpture evoke the harmonious plastic rhythms and evolved, free flowing lines that Atchugarry has refined over the past three decades. Here, the movement of draped folds around three elliptical voids creates a dramatic sensation of movement in the round, as the forms spiral upward and outward around an integral, yet open center. The suggestively metamorphic quality and fluid dynamism of his forms may even recall the Italian baroque tradition in the brilliant play of light and shadow across undulating marble surfaces. "The receding cascades of varying depth and the network of stereometric patterns create a dynamic labyrinth of shades that, together with the highly polished surfaces create a structure of reflection and absorption of light that parallels the flowing textures of Bernini's figures," curator Till-Holger Borchert has noted. "Even Atchugarry's most abstract works have a remarkable affinity to baroque sculpture, underlying once again the artist's deep involvement with tradition."(3) The moving eloquence of the present work suggests a sublime meditation on the baroque tradition and, no less, a consummate expression of Atchugarry's aesthetics in its lyricism and poetic grace.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park.
1) P. Atchugarry, "Fragments of Life: A Conversation with Valeria Campagni," Pablo Atchugarry: A Journey Between Matter and Light, Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2006, 128-29, 251.
2) Ibid., 54, 247.
3) T-H. Borchert, "Between Material and Immaterial, Amidst History and the Present," Pablo Atchugarry: A Journey between Matter and Light, 16.