ANTONIO DÍAZ GARCÍA - ESCULTURAS

cut-up rags, Julio González cutting, embossing and soldering iron, and Antonio Díaz has found it at his forge. As a sculptor I daren’t make any theoretical judgments, but I do see sincerity in a work at once, and I must say that finding out about the presentation of this new book has been the most pleasurable surprise of recent times. Thank you, Antonio, for having returned to sculpture and for sharing the incredible results with us. It would have been unfair for so much sensitivity and creativity to remain hidden. Matilde Grau Sculptor and Fine Arts Professor A few years ago, on a trip to Sicily, I found the idea of climbing Mount Etna very alluring. From the city of Catania you could see the volcano’s impressive profile in the distance with smoke blown miles out by the wind. The climb to the summit was an impressive experience. All trace of vegetation quickly disappears, as does any form of life. Huge masses of black rock twist around and pile on top of each other. They are ancient rivers of lava, liquid earth melted by the energy of the fire from the heart of the planet. Here the presence of a primeval, primitive force can be felt, which models the earth we walk on and the forms that we perceive. As we carried on our ascent, the surroundings became more and more abrupt, and at 3000 metres we came across great drifts of snow, several metres thick. The contrast grows ever greater, with black earth covered in blankets of white, with visible layers of ash. Once at the summit, the snow disappears due to the heat of the volcano. The ground is reddish in colour, indescribably dry and arid. As we drew closer to one of the craters, which exhale steam and sulphurous gasses, I felt a strong sensation of vertigo in the face of this telluric, earthly landscape. My heart beats fast, it is quite a unique experience. If one puts their hands to the ground, one can feel the heat that rises up from the depths; the stones literally burn you. I am overwhelmed by feelings of humility and respect. We found ourselves face to face with the earth’s heartbeat. As we descended, walking with difficulty on the folds of black lava though a dry, barren, other-worldly landscape, I had an unexpected surprise: on one of the flatter parts, I discovered a small green patch, fresh and vigorous, that came forth from the cremated earth. A paradox, a miracle, an unthinkable reality: from the most abject destruction life had been born. The experience of that trip remains vivid in my memory. Recently, I visited Antonio in his workshop. It is a large space, with iron bars all around, a huge pile of coal sacks and his big sculptures of iron, twisted, tensed and crushed… Here one finds themselves face to face with basic elements: the burning, intense, spitting fire, kept alive by the constant flow of air; the deafening racket of his hammer; but most of all, the presence of the incandescent iron that draws your gaze and demands the highest respect. It is a primitive element, borne from the depths of the planet, that man has struggled to shape for millennia. There Antonio was with his searching spirit, his irrepressible will to create new forms, forms that he has seen only in his dreams, and his tenacious, obsessive, almost corporeal struggle. He showed me his most recent works: huge bars of solid iron shaped with enormous effort in the fire of the forge. A titanic combat with hammer and tongs over the anvil, folding the roaring metal in and around itself; face covered in sweat and hands blackened. I find myself before the very moment of the creation of his dream, the completion of his struggle. Mere hours later I laid my hands on the piece that he was working on, retracing the folds and the shapes that had come out of the forging. Sculpture is a sensual art, it seduces us and searches to connect with us. At that moment I felt the heat of the metal, a heat that was still intense; without a doubt it was the original heartbeat of the fire and of the earth. The origin of form and life, the origin of ART. Josep Giribet Torrelles Graduate of the Sant Jordi Fine Arts Faculty. Professor of the Massana School, Barcelona. Professor at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. I know Antonio Díaz García from when used to bump into each other on occasion at the home of a well-known painter who was a mutual friend. Our conversations always came round to the topic of art. Antonio couldn’t help but give in to his artistic streak, which I presume genetic, given that there are important artists in his family. Here he opens his soul, his anxieties, his hidden feelings up to us through an impressive oeuvre; he has burst with such force and intensity into the artistic world that he has astonished both friends and unknowns: his creative capacity has overflowed to an unimaginable extent. A powerful sculptor, with great spirit, he has a great knowledge of the technique of forging and the secrets of the forceful forms his work acquires. No challenge is too great for his creative force. Once he has tamed the burning iron, there is nothing his hammer, mallet and anvil cannot do with it. In his own words, his aim is to be able to work iron, to shape it as if it were clay, an arduous and difficult, if not almost impossible task. Nevertheless people who think that way are those who are in search of perfection, even in the knowledge that it may not exist. His work inexorably draws your attention. It leaves nobody indifferent, but not because it is incomprehensible, but rather for the reason that his work is known in the artistic world; it has an expressive power that transmits feeling and emotion. Definitively, it is impregnated with quality; it is magnificent. Antonio Díaz believes that inspiration comes with intense, conscientious, persevering work, and he works long, hard days from dawn to dusk. He trusts his instinct, his work, and competes with himself. While he is making a sculpture, a kind of empathy arises between him and the piece: he talks to it, he cossets it, he fights with it, and twists and contorts it, even if it resists. He doesn’t make it easy. He combines tension and balance until he achieves the final metamorphosis that he wants the piece to undergo. Only then does he consider the piece finished, when he lets it free and shows it to the public so that his message may be understood. Innovative and unique, Antonio Díaz is an untiring investigator; he is capable of anything, because he does everything with such personality, without external influences. His work is totally original, expressed in a personal language and dimension that goes beyond the sculptural to acquire its own qualities. His production is brilliant and timeless, with an absolute magnetic quality where feelings are expanded and emotions are glorified. Antonio Díaz, a man with a restless soul who finds the supreme raison d’être of his art in expressive distortion, is from my point of view one of the greatest exponents of iron sculpture, an artist at the apogee of his creative trajectory, with an eagerness that turns each of his sculptures into a new challenge, for it is in sculpture that he finds his maximum enjoyment. José Patsí Canudes Professor of the Ángel Oliveras School of Art It was a pleasant surprise to get to know Antonio Díaz Garcías’s work, and I say surprise due to the coherence and rigorousness of an oeuvre that goes beyond the technique of forging to become a work of art. Antonio Díaz impresses as a person for his constant work as an artistic creator, and for his spirit forged (a word never more suitably used than here) by honesty, as shown by his work. It is inspired, with a certain delicacy in his forms, in those works that are born in the depths of his own self. They are constructed with techniques of a preciosity and virtuosity rarely seen, acquired only by discipline and depth of knowledge. His work turns the hardest metal, iron, into something soft, plastic and malleable. A singular quality that comes about only by daily practice, over years. His work speaks to us of heavy loads, of structural efforts, of the point where tensions meet, of degrees of elasticity, of structural movements caused by their own weight, and so on. All of these considerations give his sculptures a dynamic, non-rigid, changeable structure. His familiarity with the properties of the material, like some forge alchemist-cum- engineer, allows him to strip them back, and to reflect on properties above and beyond those which are inherent to the material; an admirable and innovative reflection that allows for a contemplation of his work from an unusual perspective. He is an artist that subtly adapts the iron, without belying the true labour of the technical knowledge of his daily work. It is well known that the result is not only his work, but rather the process, the man that exists behind the creation. In a word, this deep creative spirit brings him to understand art as the sublimation of the very self. There is a certain inherent spirituality that constantly emanates from his work. Sculpture on occasion is borne from the ground, it places itself in the ground, but in AD’s hands, it escapes from the ground and levitates up to the sky in a delicate movement. This modelling at his hands, as if the iron were mere clay, makes us think that perhaps his work is not iron at all. Jaume de Oleza Architect