Born in 1955 in Barcelone (Spain). Lives in Barcelone.

In residence at the Atelier Calder from March to August 1996.

Since his first exhibitions in the 1980s, the Catalan sculptor Jaume Plensa has developed a wide range of techniques and aesthetic languages, marking distinct phases within his practice. While his early work favoured a more abstract and conceptual approach to sculpture, it has gradually evolved towards figurative research centred on the representation of the human body. Recurring figures in his recent work, the hieratic female portraits he creates in a variety of materials and scales have played a key role in his international recognition, as well as in the numerous monumental projects he has realised around the world.

Deeply inspired by poetry, the artist gives a central place to language and writing, which take on physical form within the material and spatial presence of his sculptures. Paradoxically, words become part of a silent, introspective and meditative practice that also extends into drawing.

Across the various paths he explores, a continuous reflection on the human condition runs through Jaume Plensa’s work. His anthropomorphic figures present the body’s outer shell as a way of probing its interiority and questioning the enigmatic nature of existence. The contradictions inherent in the human being—caught between an inexpressible inner space and the reverberations of the surrounding world—find expression in the ongoing dialogue Plensa establishes between opacity and transparency.