From my studio: Juan Ramón Martín

Juan Ramon Martín is a Spanish sculptor who works with mastery both steel and wood. He was awarded with the National Sculpture Prize Victorio Macho in 2010 and today is the protagonist of the section “From my studio”.

1. When and why did you start making sculpture?
The first sculpture I made was a wood carving made on a tree that arrived to the beach many years ago. The steel sculpture I make is a geometrical expression I started in 1999. I produced this sculpture with numerical series and mathematical proportions.

2. Which is your favourite time of the day to make sculpture? How much time do you dedicate to painting?
I really like working at night, a time when I think about the new pieces I will be working on the following days. I spend those hours writing and drawing. My job is quite noisy so I only work the evenings: between 4pm and 9pm.

3. Of all your sculptures, which is your favourite one? Why?
Three years ago I started a series entitled “The house in which the wind lives” which resulted in an exhibition at the Museum of Sculpture in Leganés. I really like the series because it has very diverse and harmonious proportions. It has many interesting points of view.

4. What are your sources of inspiration?
Nature. In nature evrything is contained. It has no element with no interest. It is inexhaustible. My language about her it's called cold geometry. Every way of expression fits into the landscape: from the visual,  the sound, the touch... The most figurative, the copy  or the interpretation.

5. If you could reincarnate in an great master of art, who would you like to be?
Surely Walter Gropius of Frank Lloyd Wright, architects of the twentieth century whose biographies are full of intense events. Maybe Kandinsky, Gauguin.

6. Of all the artistic movements, which one influences you more?
It is Constructivism for sure.  There was an exhibition at Fundación Juan March in the 80s entitled “Contrasts of form” where many paintings and sculptures from this movement were displayed. It was a movement that had impact in the Twentieth century and whose roots spread from Russia to Europe and America. Constructivism is a language and a very pure form of expression which departs from figuration and perspective and from the representation of the world of appearances.

7. What is art for you? Which role does it play in your life?
For me art is a way of understanding the world that surrounds me, both the physical and spiritual. In art, there is a part of transcendental explanation, deep and serious, that interests me, always under the tutelage of a certain poetic.

Discover the works made by this artist here