Pablo Atchugarry

Pablo Atchugarry (born August 23, 1954) is a Uruguayan artist, best known for his abstract sculptural art. His works are included in many major collections, both private and public, and he has held more than one hundred solo and collective exhibitions worldwide.

Early life and education Pablo Atchugarry was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on August 23, 1954. His parents, Maria Cristina Bonomi and Pedro Atchugarry Rizzo, were passionate art enthusiasts. Before setting aside his artistic ambitions to support his family, Pedro Atchugarry trained under the great Uruguayan Constructivist Joaquín Torres-García and such experience enabled him to guide his son's artistic talents and to encourage Pablo to take up painting.

At age eleven, Atchugarry began showing his works and as he progressed through adolescence, he started feeling the need to express himself in various forms and materials, such as cement, iron, and wood. By age eighteen, he had his first personal exhibition of paintings at the Civic Room in Montevideo in 1972 and he had undertaken his first experiment with sculpture – a horse cast in concrete. During his travels, he visited Spain, France, and Italy, and while visiting Milan he reconnected with a woman he had met in Paris.

Atchugarry currently lives and works between Lecco and Manantiales where he oversees the development of the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry and the international monumental sculpture park, as well as teaching and promoting art. He works with white Carrara marble from Tuscany, gray stone from Bardiglio, black from Belgium, and pink from Portugal. Aside from working with stone, he utilizes bronze finished in various patinas, ceramic, and, more rarely, various types of wood.

There is no ideal view from which to examine one of Atchugarry's sculptures. The viewer is supposed to observe each work as a whole, and contemplate how all of the sculpture's parts work together. Though composed in different materials, his works are united by a tightly defined set of forms that he consistently recombines. Manipulating sinuous curves, accordion folds, ovoid apertures, and a typically vertical alignment, Atchugarry creates forms that are highly evocative of plants and trees, breaking waves, still lifes, and the human figure. Thus, his sculptures are both figural and abstract.

Exhibitions In 1972, Atchugarry had his first personal exhibition of paintings at the Civic Room in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In 1987, the artist held his first solo sculpture exhibition in Bramantino's Crypt in Milan.

During the spring of 2001, the Province of Milan organized a retrospective of Atchugarry's work entitled "The Infinite Evolutions of Marble" at the Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan.

In 2003, Atchugarry represented Uruguay in the 50th International Exhibition of the Visual Arts at the Venice Biennale of 2003 with an installation of eight sculptures in Garrara marble and Grey Bardiglio marble entitled Dreaming of Peace.

From 2007 to 2008, a retrospective exhibition dedicated to his work entitled "The Plastic Space of Light" was held in Brazil, accompanied by a critical text written by Luca Massimo Barbero. Province of Milan Initially staged at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Centre in Brasília, the exhibition travelled to the MuBe (Museu Brasileiro da Escultura) in São Paulo and the Museu Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba.

During the winter of 2011, Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York mountedthe solo show "Pablo Atchugarry: Heroic Activities." Hollis Taggart Galleries held another show of the artist's work titled "Pablo Atchugarry: Lives in Stone" from 7 November 2013 to 4 January 2014.

From 22 May 2015 to 7 February 2016, forty sculptures by Atchugarry were exhibited at the Museum dei Fori Imperiali – Mercati di Traino in Rome as part of the exhibition "Eternal City, eternal marbles."

During spring 2016, Hollis Taggart exhibited "Pablo Atchugarry: Invocations of the Soul" from 5 May to 11 June 2016. The catalog for this show contains original texts by Luciano Caprile, Jonathan Goodman, Fundación Pablo Atchugarry and Pietro Dormia as well as press releases and photographs from other major exhibitions of Atchugarry's work.