Javier Marín

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Big, Bold and Majestic. The massive bronze nudes of Javier Marín embrace all the vitality of Renaissance sculpture, capture the mystery of Michelangelo’s Bound Slaves, the drama of Rodin’s Gates of Hell and the extraordinary dignity of Mayan and Aztec portraiture. His work is a unique and dynamic blend of Western European and Mexican culture.

Marín was born in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico in 1962. He studied art San Carlos, the National Academy of Art, in Mexico City and has exhibited widely throughout Mexico with solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, MARCO in Monterrey, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. He has been featured in over thirty solo exhibitions and participated in more that one hundred domestic and international exhibitions including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Working quickly, primarily in clay, Marín does not refer to a model but instead relies on his remarkable knowledge of the human form gathered from years of drawing directly from the figure. Process is one of the artists most obvious passions, spikes of bronze are often left exposed to show the paths of molten metal flowing into the cast figure. During the creation of a work, words might be quickly inscribed onto the raw clay, holes gauged and support structures left exposed, reminding one of the surfaces of Spanish painter Antonio Tapies. It is this deliberate coarseness combined with his elegant classic approach to the figure that combines to give these works such power and substance.

Javier Marín is an exceptional sculptor, truly one of the great artists of our era.