XAVIER MASCARÓ
b. 1965, FranceThe Spanish artist Xavier Mascaró (*1965) studied at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Barcelona, where he graduated in painting in 1988. Just one year later, he shifted his artistic focus to sculpture, then experimented with bronze, tin, stone, and ceramics for a few years, before deciding to largely concentrate on the material iron.
His broad spectrum of motifs includes, for example, heads and depictions of animals, which are, however, less figurative than they are symbolic allegories for certain feelings, fears, or longings. Another large complex of works consists mainly of armour, helmets, warriors, stranded ships–symbols from an archaic military context. Traces of mythology mingle freely with ideas and memories of an individual childhood.
After a two-year stay in New York (1996-1998), during which he not only had the courage to work on monumental sculptures, but was inevitably confronted with a certain foreignness in culture, geography, and language, he increasingly began to work with his personal cultural context, with icons and symbols of Spanish cultural history. For him, religious and spiritual references play an essential role, which led him in 2008 to show an installation in the Spanish monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos. Xavier Mascaro lives and works in Madrid, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.
Text courtesy Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art.
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