Tridimensional Dialogue
Atchugarry, Cárdenas,
Ramirez Villamizar
August 1–November 2014
Opening: Friday, August 1, 7–10pm
Durban Segnini Gallery
3072 SW 38th Ave
Miami, FL 33146
gallery [at] durbansegnini.com
Catalogue by Dr. Bélgica Rodriguez
“Three different sculptors, different aesthetics, different three-dimensional propositions—all of them interrelated, nonetheless, despite their differences—come together in Diálogo Tridimensional (Tridimensional Dialogue), an exhibition that combines the works of the Cuban-French Agustín Cárdenas, the Colombian Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar and the Uruguayan Pablo Atchugarry. A common characteristic that unites them—each artist situated in his own period in time, with his own cultural and human circumstances—resides in the indissolubility of the universality and the historic-artistic level of their work. Working at different times and in different scenarios, these artists have maintained current fundamental canons of avant-garde trends in the history of art. Each of them is an “abstract” artist who has given form to marvels of modern art and who has ventured into areas connected to man’s spiritual and material endeavors. Each has contributed solutions to the objectivism of concrete abstraction by manifesting the sensuality of cultures connected to the earth, to human beings, to the culture of a “symbolic” American continent that refuses to reduce its existence solely to phenomenological circumstances.
Connected to a society’s conscious reality, the trio formed by Cárdenas, Ramírez Villamizar and Atchugarry addresses man’s imagery with regards to a conscious perception of physical and spiritual space. Understanding, looking, seeing, the sculptures that will be occupying one same space, Galería Durban Segnini, offer the opportunity to participate in a dialog with art’s three-dimensional conceptual reality.
Agustín Cárdenas (1927–2001, Cuba) develops his creative talent from painting and engraving during his formative stage in his native Cuba, when he studies at the celebrated San Alejandro Academy and works at the studio of Juan José Sicre, at the time a well-known Cuban sculptor who has a great influence on the young Cárdenas…Cárdenas was an avant-garde sculptor of the mid-20th century who did not adhere to the optical or kinetic geometric abstraction trends that he found upon his arrival in Paris. His investigations into thematic and formal fields followed a parallel course, influenced perhaps not only by Bourdelle but also by Henry Moore with respect to the contortion of the form of the reclined figure.
For Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (1922–2014, Colombia), the trajectory through the Universidad Nacional de Bogotá’s School of Architecture was fundamental to him in creating a constructivist body of work that was passionate about his relationship with pre-Hispanic Latin American cultures…He arrives in Paris in 1950. After a period as an expressionist painter, he becomes acquainted with Joaquín Torres García’s propositions of constructivist universalism. He also develops an interest in geometric abstraction and constructivism and in the optic-kinetic work of Victor Vasarely—for whom color, form and geometry are fundamental elements of artistic creation. He then undergoes a radical change: he becomes an abstract painter who predominantly uses lines, stripes and planes of intense color—blue, green, red—supported by neutral whites, blacks and grays. When he turns to sculpture, he seems to extract forms from these two-dimensional structures, taking them to a three-dimensional physical space.
The third and youngest sculptor exhibiting his work is Pablo Atchugarry (b. 1954, Uruguay). In Diálogo tridimensional, he presents various works that follow the unique aesthetic and technique that have characterized him: fine carvings in white Carrara marble that project vertically into infinity as if poetic lace…The first person that exerted an influence on Atchugarry was his father, a student of Joaquín Torres García in Montevideo. In the 1970s, like all of them, he starts off as a painter, quickly becoming well-known thanks to the number of solo exhibitions he presents in major European cities since his formative years… Art critics and analysts have identified Atchugarry’s usually monumental sculptures with the obelisk, as an iconic representation of magic and spiritual rites and ceremonies. “Monoliths of light” that reach towards the infinite, symbols of sensibilities celebrating gods that illuminate man’s path.”
–Appropriation and excerpts from Belgica Rodriguez essay: “A three-dimensional dialog.”
About Durban Segnini Gallery
For over 40 years, the Durban Segnini Gallery has played an important role introducing artists who have worked with abstract expressionism, abstraction, constructivism, geometric and kinetic art, as well as promoting new artistic values and the historical vanguards that have influenced them. Cesar Segnini director and owner founded Durban Segnini Gallery in Venezuela in 1970. In 1992, he established his first exhibition space in Coral Gables, relocated later in its current venue at 3072 SW 38th Avenue, a much larger gallery on the border of both cities: Miami and Coral Gables. With the world’s leading art galleries Durban Segnini Gallery attends international art fairs in Latin America, Europe and the US. Their expertise includes the integration of artworks to architectural spaces and its customized consultant services to private collections.