Exhibition
28.01.1999 - 05.04.1999

Muecas. Susana Solano

finished

Susana Solano "Lalibela Nº12", 1996

This exhibition offered an extensive overview of the work produced by the sculptress Susana Solana (Barcelona, 1946) in the course of the eighties and nineties. The twofold idea of the show was to transcend the fragmented readings of her work that existed at the time, and to place particular emphasis on the wide range of media used by the artist.

In terms of sculpture, the exhibition highlighted the creative turn that Solana’s work took from 1993 onwards, when it began to include an increasing number of references to the body, to natural elements and to the phenomenology of the everyday. It also presented, for the first time, a selection of 100 drawings produced between 1978 and 1998, which transcended the merely projectual nature of graphic practice and emphasised her own creative syntax. A range of photographic series and two installations produced by MACBA – New York and A dalt i a baix – rounded off the exhibition.

dates

28 January 1999 – 5 April 1999

title

Muecas. Susana Solano

dates

28 January 1999 – 5 April 1999

title

Muecas. Susana Solano

artist

Susana Solano

Barcelona

1946

see detail

Trained in Fine Arts at the Universitat de Barcelona, the city where she was born, Susana Solano began her artistic practice through painting and later moved into sculpture. Made of wood, her first works from the early eighties show the clear influence of Brancusi, which she soon abandoned for the methods of the Catalan artisanal forging tradition, her sculptures taking on a monumentality in which solid structures, architectural enclosures and open cages predominate. In the nineties, with works close to Minimalism and Constructivism, she produced sculptures with a strict geometric simplicity that she gradually abandoned in favour of a certain lyricism and a spiritual vindication of the material. She is considered heir to the Spanish sculptural tradition, and follows in the footsteps of Julio González, Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida.

She has exhibited since the eighties in numerous galleries and institutions such as the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (1980); CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (1987); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1993; MEIAC, Badajoz (2004); Fundación ICO, Madrid (2007): Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2011); and IVAM, Valencia (2019), among many others. She has participated in international exhibitions such as Documenta, Kassel (1987 and 1992); São Paulo Biennial (1987); and Venice Biennale (1988 and 1993). Her work is included in collections such as Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA, New York, Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; and MACBA, Barcelona.