SUBIRACHS ANALOGAS OPPOSITIONS) (1949 - 2009)

DUALIDADES

OPOSICIONES

(ANALOGIES

DUALITIES

The main purpose of the anthological and retrospective expositions is to show repertories of particularly representative works of an artists activity and to facilitate an ample and global view which allows to critically discover, analyze and valorize the most particular constants of his career. The grouping of works of subsequent phases will therefore be a suggestive invitation to reflection, requires a certain interpretation capacity and allows to draw conclusions. The exposition dedicated to the works of the sculptor Josep M. Subirachs presented in the Lonja in Zaragoza is especially welcomed because there are many people who nowadays identify only the Catalan sculptor as the author of the sculptural groups and of the bronze doors which are part of the facade of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. For its magnificence, uniqueness and the controversies it generated, the intervention of the sculptor in the temple in construction from decades in Barcelona has overshadowed the rest of his production, diluting the incidence of his innovations to the history of art of the second half of the 20th century. . The ex position has been planned in order to claim and, in a certain way, rediscover the long and prolific career of the previous Subirachs, even parallel to his participation to the temple designed by Gaud. Even if this is a selection, it is of course very difficult to sum up a production which is made up of more than one thousand works, especially considering that some of the most significant ones were conceived as bound to architecture and urbanization. Subirachss art is in the street, in the underground, in the facades and in the interiors of civil and religious buildings, in the shops and in the gardens. His personality is mirrored both in the monument and in the little sculpture, in the big mural and in the medal. The art historian Francesc Fontbona wrote: Subirachss art has become all art tends to be: something normal. For this Subirachs is already a classic even if, happily, a discussed classic and a classic so self-confident that the coordinates of his works vary from a big monument to the common door handle1. The selection of the works exhibited in this exposition shows another dimension of this public artist who left a mark strongly imprinted in the collective space. They are little or big works, realized in the intimacy of his laboratory, within the limits required by the works on demand. About the monumental aspect of sculpture, Subirachs himself declared: I think sculpture doesnt have to be necessarily monumental. Even if Im very interested in the large works, the one destined to public places, where it can be contemplated by many people and not only by a minority. The little art work is usually destined to a collector, who can nicely place it in a corner of its library, or perfectly lit in a hall; but it will be enjoyed only by a restricted number of people. On the other hand, the work placed in a street, in a garden or on a mountain will be of public domain and, furthermore, for the sculptor it is a test in which he risks everything; the monumental work is exposed to the sunlight, which is the most difficult light, because it reveals all the defects. The path Analogies, dualities, oppositions of the ex position begins with three sculptures and a drawing which the still show the influence of his predecessors of the twentieth century.

They are limpid nudes without superfluous ornamental details. There are also various works representative of the expressionist phase, when we can already claim that the artist has found his own style, while an anthological piece like Tekel (1958), among the other exposed works, is a good example of the abstraction phase. Another series well represented in the exhibition is the one of the polimateric wedges, which dates back to the sixties and in which the main resources are inlay and tension games and the dialogue between the different materials and the different configurations. The path includes several pieces which are part of the so called figuration phase, characterized of many symbolic elements and in which the analysis of dualities and opposition strengthens. Dated to the last years, we have a series of works of metaphysical character, with frequent architectonic references which provide the link established between the tridimensional elements and the allegorical components with a remarkable expressive capacity. They are new versions of works which allow to realize how the artist cites himself recreating or reinterpreting, with different shades, some themes that were already represented by him in previous phases. Contrasts of style and combination of materials and models define his personality until the point in which the game of dualism figurative-abstract, shape-symbol, innovation-repetition, painting-sculpture becomes almost the authors emblem and his trademark. IDEA, MATTER, SHAPE Moving from a conception of the art work as a media, Subirachs tries to find a formula allowing to express the working of the creative process as metaphysical unrest and research of new formal and thematic prospects. Starting from the reflection and formal and semantic experimentation, he is able to unify idea and matter to reach the perdurability of the shape and elaborate a symbolic alphabet decipherable by a large audience who gets closer to his works without bias. The perfect link between the original idea and the definitive shape is obtained through a perfect knowledge of the materials with the purpose to foresee their results and try to lessen the decay due to the passing of time and other adversities. In this way, as Subirachs claims, the artist doesnt fight against the matter, but dialogues with it. The sculptor experiments with different materials which allow him to realize tridimensional shake: earthenware, stone, ceramic, wood, iron, bronze, cement. In the course of the creative process concerning the conceiving of the definite work, Subirachs shows a big respect for the matter and the way to work it: technique unifies to reflection, skill to creativity. The matter coming from the idea becomes an art work which tests the perdurability of the shape. Transforming the matter in a source of mental energy is therefore what we mean as creativity, a necessary faculty of any artist, because without creativity the art work is never original, doesnt introduce anything new and loses its reason of existence. FROM THE PERIOD OF TRAINING TO THE MARKS OF A PERSONAL STYLE Josep M. Subirachs Sitjar, child of a working class family living in Poblenou, an industrial neighbor of Barcelona, was born on March 11th 1927, two years after the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera abolished the Mancomunitat de Catalunya2. When in 1931 the Second Republic was proclaimed, the institutional survival of the movement called noucentisme was still clear,

independently from the fact that since 1928 the vanguard movements diverted the wellpondered mediterraneism to introduce an artistic and aesthetic renovation. But the antirepublican military revolt which caused in 1936 the Spanish civil war, the 1939 defeat and the beginning of Francos dictatorship traumatically interrupted not only a political option which was democratically chosen, but also the aesthetic renovation which was consolidating. The post-war severe economic depression caused a decrease of the purchase power of the population, especially of the working classes who, in the forties, became very poor. When he was fourteen, Josep Maria Subirachs was forced to give up his ambition to attend architecture courses and started working as an assistant in a gilders laboratory. Later he worked for an antiquarian, a mechanic and an advertising designer. In this period he already modeled mud figures which he coke in the oven of a furnace. In 1942 he was admitted in the laboratory of the sculptor Enric Monjo as an assistant and also attended courses at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Barcelona as a free student. Monjo, who had had a primary role in the preservation of art works during the civil war and has a deep knowledge of the works of the painters/sculptors of Castilian sacred images, took on the ambitious task of recreating most part of the religious sculptural patrimony destroyed by the war. He was a sculptor noted for his technical skills, for his mastery on anatomy and , above all, for his enormous working capacity. In Monjos laboratory, where the activity was frantic, Subirachs acquired technical skills, but the master who influenced him the most was actually Enric Casanovas, with whom he worked for a very brief period because unfortunately the noucentist sculptor died in January 1948, just a few months after Subirachs was admitted in his laboratory as a collaborator.3. Casanovas, who suffered the experience of exile and prison, realized a sculpture through which his disciple discovered the classic heritage modified by a new style. In fact the Noucentism lasted until the fifties, because the post-war period and the international block limited the contact with the world beyond the Pyrenees. The influence of the mediterraneist tendency, characterized by the will to create a pure and sober art, is clear in the first works by Subirachs, such as Mujer mediterrnea (Mediterranean woman) (1949), Europa (Europe) (1950), Mujer sentada (Woman sitting) (1953) and Figura sentada (Figure sitting) (1953), even if in these works his future impressionistic phase is already visible. In 1949 Subirachs was invited to the Second October Salon, one of the post-war first exhibitions, which, because of its ambitions of renovations, supposed a change of attitude of the Catalan society towards the modern art and that, for the young sculptor, was an important public recognition. Two years later, thanks to a study grant by the Cercle Maillol del Instituto Francs de Barcelona (French Institute of Barcelona), visited Paris for the first time, where he was in contact with the latter European vanguards and was thrilled by the works of British sculptor Henry Moore. Before this European experience he had already discovered two of the artists which he had previously admired during the years: Antoni Gaud and Orson Welles, whose genius allowed him to perceive the creative possibilities of two of the arts he was enchanted to the most: architecture, his real vocation and cinema, his passion. Very soon Subirachs was also interested to the concept of sculpture which was defended in Catalonia by artsts such as ngel Ferrant or Eudald Serra, who represented the first vanguards, which even during the Republican period showed ambitions of renovation respect to the anachronisms and conventionalisms of the official academic art. In the process of morphological study beginning since 1953, the most relevant influence is without any doubt the

one by Gaud, whom he has always considered the precursor of many of the innovations of art of modeling of the twentieth century. The tendency to the expressive deformation becomes the germ of the organicism well expressed in Maniqu-dolo (Maniquin-Idol) (1954), a torso culminating in five appendixes arms, chest, neck -, imagine that symbolizes the opposition between different ekements (ref. Also to the drawing Torso [1954]). As written by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot, the female form experimented a transformation highlighting the tectonic values at the expense of the figurative ones 5. In 1954, invited by Belgian artist Luc Peire, Subirachs moved to Belgium, where he lived and worked for two years. In this period he became a real professional sculptor who worked to earn his own living working in the field he was interested in the most. He attended the Bienal de Amberes and exhibited in Bruxelles, Bruges and Knokke. Works well representive of this phase are Moiss (Moses) (1955), Celine (1955) and Femme la plage (Woman on the beach) (1955), as well as the groups Edipo y Antgona (Oedipus and Antigone) (1955) and Las Parcas (The Parcae) (1955). The South-Iraqui expressionism is for sure more formal than conceptual and it can be appreciated in distorted canon figures, in the fragmentation of the various parts of the human body with sharp angle structures and, above all, in the treatment of surfaces when volumes become angular. This phase includes also a single piece: Torre de Babel (Tower of Babel) (1955), a very schematic whole of quasi-conical integrated linear structures6. In caro (Icarus) (1955) it is clear his departure from realistic elements which will characterize the successive phase of his career. CONCEPTUAL ABSTRACTION When Subirachs came back to Barcelona in 1956 his figures departed from any realistic appearance and expressionism and orient towards an organic abstraction, a process especially clear in pieces such as Dco (1957) and Mujer (Woman) (1957), a lying figure far from the figurative references and which is the first version of the work Forma 212, which will be commented in the following pages (ref. also to the drawing Sirena (Mermaid) [1957]). The anthropomorphism is replaced by the abstraction as a theme and the works present formal problems and spatial solutions. From this period, which is characterized by the dominion of the matter painting, the ornamental abstraction and the grattage, Subirachs revealed a special interest in enhancing the surface of his creations and experiments with the structures to highlight the quality of each material. This is the reason for which he never leaves his sculptures smooth, he ages them and make them coarse, rough, rustic to highlight their expressive capacity. As written by Daniel Giralt-Miracle, his raspados (scrape marks) may give the appearance of informal abstraction, but they are elaborated with the minuteness of a goldsmith. The tattoos stamped on the matter are deeply elaborated, obey to objects, signs or images with whom he wants to enrich the communicative value of the work7. In the late fifties, the process towards a very personal style even more pure led him to take an interest in iron, not as a material treated in the style of the craftsmen, but using industrial techniques such as welding. For these compositions he chose the usual elements of the smith: circular, square and rectangular section bar, plates almost like pure surfaces and also remains of industrially used pieces, such as T-beams, sheets, ecc8. In the iron pieces he adopted a

formal schematization similar to the ones related to the expressionist figures and the first abstract shapes, but the matter is now reduced to a minimal expression. In a later phase, the iron realizations, in which the line and plane prevail, detach themselves from the initial purity and the treatment of the structure becomes the center of attention, like, for example in the work Doble forma ( Double shape) (1961), dominated by two curved shields. In the same period he worked with other materials (earthenware, stoneware, ceramic, wood, bronze, cement), trying to highlight for each of them the plastic qualities of their various structures and their colours, their intrinsic value and their combination capacity. In order to obtain the balance of some works he incorporates blocks of stone, not as a base but as a counterweight, or creates structures with couplings of iron and wood like in Tekel (1958), which won the Sculpture Award Julio Gonzlez9. This work as noted by Jos CorredorMatheos is already an assemblage and presupposes the start of use of different materials which will characterize the period of penetrations, when they will be always used with their qualities and cut in natural way: breaking, erosion, ecc. This direct use of the natural materials will open the door to colour, the specific one of each material, which will concur to create a new image to Subirachss art10. Between 1958 and 1960 Subirachs started his important contribution in the field of the public sculpture. In 1958 Forma 212 was erected (Barcelona, Paseo de la Vall dHebron), a cement piece which, being the first abstract work placed in a public space in Barcelone, caused much disconcertment. In the next year Las tablas de la ley (The Tables of the Law) was erected (Barcelona, facade of the Law Department of the Barcelona University, Avenida Diagonal), realized with the collaboration of the ceramist Antoni Cumella, and in 1960 another abstract piece placed in a public space: Evocacin marinera (Maritime Evocation) (Barcelona, Paseo de Joan de Borb) (ref. to the first project named Psalm [1958]). In the same period he worked in the Santuario de la Virgen del Camino open in 1961 in Len where he realized the monumental figures of the facade the Virgin and the Twelve Apostles-, four bronze doors and various elements for the interior of the temple itself: sacrarium, crucifixes, pulpits, candelabra, lamps and baptismal font. This ensemble, which was considered a hymn to the Spanish artistic renovation in the twentieth century, represents a figurative parenthesis and, at the same time, the culmination of his expressionist phase . POLIMATERIC ASSEMBLIES Between the late fifties and early sixties, Subirachs starts the series which was called by Corredor-Matheos the one of penetrations and tensions11, with elements set among themselves and iron tie rods, screws and bolts as the most usual plastic elements. This exposition presents distinguished representatives of this period . Hieron (1959) and Funerary Monument (1959) are two anticipatory pieces which include the wedge, an emblematic penetration element in numerous next works. All the used materials have a function and are displayed with authenticity, and for this the scultptor thinks to realize a work more realistic than the ones by the artists known as figurative, because they, trying to reproduce reality, actually falsify it. In the work Travertino (1961), for example, the tie rods linking the various pieces have a primordial function, because, if the bolts were unscrewed, the sculpture would disassemble itself. The sensation of tension given by this piece contrasts with the round solidity of and balance of Estabilidad (Stability) (1964).

The possibilities to create compositions with wedges multiply. Sometimes these elements adopt a progressive verticality, as in the work Vertical (Vertical) (1966) and in Unin (Union) (1962), which makes clear the contrast f the two dark woods, practically fixed at their ends with twisted iron rods, with the two set light stones forming a horizontal element. In Cua (Wedge) (1962), a dihedral angled piece penetrates and gets trapped in the concavity made up by two lateral woods in vertical position. Gravitacin (Gravitation) (1962) defines a different disposition, because the wedge with the cut tip ascends as if it tried to penetrate a block dragging it downward. Despite Frontal (Frontal) (1962) dates to the same penetration and tension period, his archeological conception announces a phase in which classical and baroque elements will mix together. The pieces includes the shafts of four ionic stone columns, progressively damaged from left to right. In the work Simetra (Symmetry) (1964), on a rectangular surface of rough wood, a bended iron plate holds a fiber cement vertical cylinder, open like a channel, with irregular edges a sit were a wound. In all the these pieces the artist highlights the contrasts among the structures of the different materials adopting new ways of treating surfaces with suggestive polychromies, patinas, velature, degradations and stigma. Among the other representative works of this phase, such as Cruz de San Miguel (saint Michaels Crux) (1962, Montserrat) or the Monumento a las vctimas de las inundaciones del Valls (Monument to the victims of the floods of Valls) (1963, Rub), it is necessary to set apart the monument Homenaje a Mxico (Homage to Mexico) (1968, Mxico D.F.), realized on occasion of the Olympic Games, whose reduced version was exposed in the exhibition: Mxico 68 (1996). NEW SIGNIFICANT FIGURATION The experiments and problems of Subirachs during this period are essentialy structural and materic. Since 1965, to increase the content f its works and avoid it limits itself to formal features, he chose a new figuration, which led to openly and clearly assert the Theme with the capital T, never the subject or the anecdote. Subirachs states: I thought that abstraction was the most useful language for an artist, especially in our century, but later I realized that, in that way, I would have never reached everyone. Abstraction is a too cryptic language, too elitist, while what I wished was to facilitate the dialogue, and for this reason I have chosen another figuration, which had nothing in common with the one of my first phase. I try to tell stories. Modern art does not do that. Ancient art does. I try to collocate subjects within my work so that people can read things. Lets not forget that art work is a media. We need to provide with a language, because elitist aesthetics is patrimony of a decadent society. It is not a representative figuration, but a significant figuration. From this moment all his work will be conditioned by a dialectic duality, by a counterpoint of elements which oppose and integrate completino themselves. The contraposition theory becomes a constant on which the artist reflects with conceptual allusions, treating the themes male-female, life-death, timespace or through formal processes, such as the disposition of different materials in the same piece, the combination of organic and geometrical shake, vertical and horizontal, convex and

concave or the incorporation of clean surfaces to create mirages. The main plastic resources introduced by him are the continuous profiles forming edges with mondanature, turned heads, positive-negative game, fragmented classical elements like columns, capitals, caryatids or balustrades and, since the early seventies, pictorial elements of realistic technique. In his attempt to overcome limits and conventions he couples different techniques: sculpture/architecture, painting/sculpture and uses all the possibilities provided by the different materials. The opposition concave-convex is surely one of the most suggestive discovers which characterizes a good number of Subirachss works, like Positivo-Negativo (PositiveNegative) (1969) a divided face, with the two half separated, each of them tries to complete itself symmetrically mirroring in a mirror-like surface. With the introduction of the negative he reaches surprising optical effects which allow him to use the figuration without falling in the realism. In Comunicacin (Communication) (1983) half female body, in negative, completes itself too his image mirroring on a shiny surface which, at the same time, is part of the profile of the male body in positive. Moira (1982), complete profile of a female face in negative, suggests intimacy integrating the outline of a hand in positive, while La Diosa (The Goddess) (1973) forms an open concavity to show a hollow female face, cut at the forehead, which reaches an effect of mystery highlighted by the translucid quality of the white marble. The shape in negative is like an imprint, like a fossil of what remains of some being or element which does not exist anymore physically. In Geo (1972) a lying female body appears printed in the block of travertine which holds it. The empty niche as an allusion to architecture and the turned head or anonymous face are two very characteristic elements of this phase. Both elements are in Hornacinas (1965), where a shape similar to a chess pawn is accommodated in the right niche, while the left one has the shape in negative of the same shape. The anonymous face reappears multiplied in the work Impersonal (Impersonal) (1966), reproducing the concept of infinite tapped in the limits of a picture. A retable-shaped structure with nine concavities holds nine bronze turned heads. Another of the main plastic resources created by Subirachs appears in the work called Galatea (1978) which, besides evoking the Greek culture, suggests the creative process of the sculpture, incorporating elements each time less schematic: point-circumference-circle-chest and point-blade-triangle-sex. On the other hand this work materialize also the space-time concept in a shape similar to the characteristic friezes realized by Subirachs with continuous profiles forming mondanature. In the sculpture called Materia-forma (Matter-shape) (1982), example of the continuous profiles, from the center of the coarse stone block some mondanature generate on both sides and take the shape of two opposite torsos (male and female), as if they were stressed. In the seventies the interest for the colour led him to incorporate painted zones in some sculptures. The end risulti s the sculptopaintings, in which he reached interesting contrasts coupling volumetric parts with painted fragments which suggest a greater visual deepth. At the end of this decade Subirachs intensified the iconographic rteferences of the Reinassance and Baroque (ref. Leonardo [1975] and Del Giocondo [1982]), Raffaello, Bernini, Drer or Rembrandt and included also classical elements capitals, caryatids, empty niches, balustrades and mythological connotations. As written by Corredor-Matheos, his world tries to recover, more with irony than nostalgia, the canons and themes of those epochs, incorporating them in the present sensivity through the fragmentation and breaking12. In fact it is an attutude which

does not despice the ancient works and tries to recover the traditional classical values (dominion of technique, research of content, recover of the well done job, real desire of communication...), enriched by of the contributions of the twentieth century: abstraction, cubism, futurism, surrealism, ecc. As spectator/reader, Subirachs defines himself eclectic, because he admires creators and styles so different like Michelangelo and Henry Moore, the gothic architecture and Gaud, Velzquez and Dal, Mahler and Stravinsky, Orson Welles and Visconti, Baudelaire and Espriu. His revisitation of ancient cultures, and concretely the evocation of the sculpture of the Italian Reinassance and Baroque, lead him to reinterpret the equestrian theme, treating it for the first time in 1968 and later again with some variations (ref. The sculpture Ecuestre [1977] and the drawing with the same title). One of the most orgiginal innovations is the way of treating the theme of the store, represented in this show by two sculptures. They are Bodegn (Store) (1985) and Mental (1988). The first one, a series of tins of different sizes, reproduced in negative and positive on a rectangular surface, derives form a very similar work called A Giorgio Morandi (To Giorgio Morandi) (1985), a homage to the most representative artist in the twentieth century in the field of the still life. In Mental, on a pedestal covered like a table by a cloth bronzed various objects are placed, represented in a hyperrealist shape, alluding to Leonardo da Vinci. BETWEEN THE EXPRESSIONIST FIGURATION AND METAPHYSICAL ABSTRACTION In 1986 Subirachs was commissioned the riskiest and most laborious job of all his professional career: the realization of the sculptural groups of the facede of the Pasin of the basilica of the Sagrada Famlia in Barcelona, emblematic work of the brilliant architect Antoni Gaud. Subirachs dedicates more than twenty years to the set of works which may be considered synthesis and culmination of his long and prolific career as a sculptor.13 After he was commissioned the job, he declared in an interview: Considering the required dimensions, it will be a very spectacular and scenographic work. It is a very complex work, but it has an essential feature totally matching my style: the narration. I will tell the last two days of Christs life. It is a very rich theme. If it is successful, it will lead my previous work style to the extreme limits.14. To represent the groups of this facade the sculptor resorts again to the figurative expressionism in order to highlight the drama required by the theme. When he creates other works in the same period of this commission, he surely recovers and adapts the abstaction language with structures dominated by geometrical shapes. As written by Cesreo RodrguezAguilera, Subirachsart depurates its old signs. Tension is replaced by serenity. Some of his most recent works invite to meditation and misticism15. These latter discovers resulted in works of metaphysical conception, with which he tries to express the tensions of the natural world, avoidinf the figuration and using a language with many architectonic references. Concretely in the work El Muro (The Wall) (1991) recovers the wedges which were used so much in the sixties and strongly reappears also the theme of the pyramids in pieces like A Djeser (1999)16 e Cimientos (Endeavours) (1999). The architectonic attribute in Subirachss works has been deeply analyzed by Belgian writer Bob de Nijs, who thinks that architecture is the base of his wishes and creative impulses, and the generative power of his protagonism in the field of sculpture 17. Perhaps this is the reason

the poet and architect Joan Margarit defined Subirachssculpture as an architecture without walls18. The ladder, as a concrete form but also as an enigmatic sign, is one of the structure Subirachs used more often, living it a strong symbolic meaning. Besides an allusion to the Escalera de Jacob (Jamess ladder) (1990), in this ex position we can observe the project of the moment of the former president of the Generalitat republicana, Francesc Maci, open in December 1991, in Catalunya square in Barcelona. While the base of the sculpture symbolizes the history of Catalonia, the reversed ladder with the unfinished ending suggests that the Country goes on to built itself day after day, moving forward step by step towards its future 19. Another reversed ladder dominates the work Dosel (1991). Some of the themes which appear and reappear in Subirachss works are the evocation of Moroccan writer, philosopher and mystic Ramon Llull, whose character has seduced the artist since decades. There are many Subirachss works related to Llulls thought, since he was a good expert of the works of the Humanist writer which sum up all the knowledge (philosophic, theological, political, social, ethical) of his epoch. In 1976 the sculptor gave his first homage to Ramon Llull creating a monument placed on the mountain of Montserrat. The thought of the medieval philosopher is allegorically represented by the ladder of knowledge, which was created by Llull to explain the different beings of creation, from the most material to the most spiritual one: stone, flame, plant, beast, man, sky, angel, God. Eight parallelepiped-shaped pieces made up a ladder which opens in helicoidal shape. A reduced version of this sculpture, realized in polychrome wood, is also part of the this show : La escalera del entendimiento (the ladder of comprehension) (2007). Finally the most recent works exposed in Zaragoza include Tercer milenio (Third millennium) (2007), whose structure id made up of three arches, each of them symbolizes one millennium of the Christian era. THE COMPOSITION OF A SYMBOLIC ALPHABETH Josep Miquel Garcia declared that the passing of time has put Subirachss sculpture in a dialectic between the material values of tridimensionality and its expressive skills, allegoric and representative, generators of symbols20. In fact to make up his personal universe, Subirachs, who identifies himself as an essentially cerebral artist, combines a diverse array of technical resources, material and intellectual, especially clear in those works in which symbology often acquires a disturbing protagonism. The viewer can barely be indifferent to before the reiterated allusions to loneliness, eroticism, passing of time, erosion, destruction, death. Among the symbolic components which he uses with more frequency from this moment as iconographic elements there are the Tower of Babel, ladder, pyramid, obelisk, balustrade, cryptogram, cloth, Mbius strip, imprint, skull and an element which repeatedly appears since the seventies, almost as an obsession: the labyrinth. The Tower of Babel appears in various sculptural versions as a symbol of the essence of Art, metaphor of the op position between man and nature, the work as a source of languages and styles. In the sculpture called Babel (1976)21, the art-death op position is highlighted through the contrast between the marked horizontality of the bone and the upward impulse of the

tower. Death reappears, represented by a skull, in the sculpture called La soledad y la muerte (Loneliness and death) (1999), one of the most moving piece of the exposition. This composition avoids the tridimensional approach, because it is conceived like a picture, including the frame, and can be linked to a series of works Subirachs made in the early eighties called by Lourdes Cirlot Cuadros de bronce22 (Bronze pictures). While the upper part of the picture is covered with a cloath hiding the mystery of the afterlife, in the lower part, the frame is interrupted and, besides the skull seen from its base, there is another symbolic element which is a leit-motiv in many of Subirachss works: the labyrinth, which symbolizes mans loneliness. Skull and labyrinth, pushed by the bronze mantle, about to get lost in the abyss at the base of the frame of a frightful picture. Loneliss and death, therefore irrevocably mold.23. In the work La cinta (The strip) (1993) the scultptor has emphasized the concept of infinite which is contained in the strip known with the name of its creator, German mathematician August Ferdinand Mbius, enigmatic surface with only one side which can be viewed in three diminsions. DRAWING OF SCULPTOR If art is always metaphor or fiction or both things at the same time drawing is, because of its essentiality, the absolute art (Josep M. Subirachs). The drawing is the first stage of any plastic work, but is is also a definitive genre itself making up a category equal to the other arts. According to Subirachs drawing is, among the plastic arts, the seed, origin, foundations, truth. He states that it is difficult to hide the frailties which can be covered up in the matter in other fields, because in drawing the matter is so scarce it does not allow to hide anything. Therefore it is in drawing where it is possible to appreciate the creators intention with greater purity. Subirachs, as a rational artist, gives drawing an important value as a prior passage to the configuration of the tridimensional work. In his drawn work, as well in his extensive graphic work, there is a domination of the line on the stain, because the line is necessary to delimit shapes and volumes and also helps to show the constructive and rhythmic structure of his compositions. Angularities, oppositions, tensions, positive-negative dialogues, projections, etc. show themselves with the same precision and details of the ones in his sculpture.24. In Subirachss drawings we can see how the artist describes the different elements: cultural elements of the history of art or humanity or symbolic elements, fruit of his readings and thought, tracing out the lines of force, both through geometry and proportions, and the contrast between opposites. The expressivity of the line and the constants of a refined, rigorous and very severe style make Subirachss drawings an instrument to deepen the meaning of his sculpture. This exposition presents twenty-eight drawings. They are not just preparatory sketches for the sculptures, but they are independent drawings, with an individualized theme. In the ensemble, they can be divided chronologically, in correspondence with the evolution of his sculpture. WHEN THE SCULPTOR PAINTS 25 In 2004, due to some surgical operation, Subirachs understands that his strength has

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weakened and he lost the vitality required to practice sculpture. Despite all of this he does not give up and, from the moment, he takes refuge in painting beginning a series of one hundred and seventy pictures, acrylic on table, twenty-four of which can be viewed now in the Lonja of Zaragoza. These are not his absolute first experiences as a painter. In 1973 he realized about fifteen oils on canvas, opening what was considered a parenthesis, even if not a rest from his sculptural production. Later he realized the commented sculptopaintings, experience which are the prelude of this last period. In Subirachss painting the imprint of the sculptor is clear. It is just a change of technique which allows him to elaborate day after day a new work which exends his creative process. Shapes and volumes, lines and planes, profiles, friezes, pyramids, labyrinths and other geometric structures create space of significant rigidity, enigmatic spaces lit by a mediterranean light. The mastery of drawing, brushwork and composition, as well the meticulous representation of the space and volume make us understand again the particular dialectic of a reflective artist, who creates a disturbing world in his work, an artist whose perfectionism does not allow anything to improvisation Surely, considering these works, it is clear that the painter Subirachs shares with the sculptor, the drawer and the engraver the symbolic world, the expression through complementary elements and the repertory of favoured themes27. The South-Iraqi universe acquires a different dimension with the painting, but it is actually the usual South-Iraqi style, perhaps more essential, characterized in this case by colour anf acrylic, from which it extracts rich qualities sometimes similar to the watercolour, sometimes to the oil.28.

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