Background

Pablo Atchugarry was born on August 23, 1954, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is a son of Pedro Atchugarry Rizzo and Maria Cristina Bonomi.

Education

Pablo Atchugarry was encouraged in his childish passion for art by his parents who were art amateurs in their turn. Taught at his time by a prominent Uruguayan representative of constructivism, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Atchugarry’s father did his best to transmit the experience to his son and to push him to pursue his professional path as an artist.

Pablo demonstrated his early paintings to the public by 1965. In a course of time, he experimented with sculpture using first such medium as cement, iron, and wood.

Atchugarry was also trained as an architect but dropped the studies and didn’t receive a diploma.

Career

The start of Pablo Atchugarry’s artistic career can be counted from the beginning of the 1970s. So, in 1972, he had shown his painting in a debut solo exhibition at the Civic Room in Montevideo. It was also the time when he created his first sculptures, including a cement composition ‘Horse’, and other compositions from cement and iron.

After having several exhibitions in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay at the end of the decade, Atchugarry made a number of trips to Europe with an intention to practice his skills and deepen his knowledge in world art. He visited Spain, France, and Italy where he had a solo show in Lecco in 1978. He took part in a number of group exhibitions in Milan, Copenhagen, Paris, Chur, Bergamo, and Stockholm as well.

The debut sculpture of marble, a Carrara composition ‘Lumière’ was finished by Atchugarry by 1982. The same year, the artist relocated to Italy where he settled down in Lecco and started to work on new monumental marble projects. The first solo show of his sculptures was organized in 1987 at the Bramantino Crypt, Milan.

Since then, Atchugarry has produced a great number of monumental works which can be seen in different public places in Europe and Latin America, including Uruguay’s government building, Manzano town (Udine), Italy, Avenue Princesse Grace in Monaco, Fundació Fran Daurel in Barcelona, the Bellinson Center in Petah Tikva, Israel to name a few.

In 1999, Pablo Atchugarry established the Museo Pablo Atchugarry in Lecco. In addition to the bibliographical documentation and an archive gathering the information about the artist’s career, the visitors have the possibility to watch Atchugarry himself working in his workshop located in the museum’s neighborhoods. Four years later, Atchugarry was chosen as the representative of Uruguay at the 50th Venice Biennale where he brought ‘Soñando la paz’, an installation of eight sculptures made from Carrara marble and Grey Bardiglio marble.

The major retrospectives of Atchugarry’s art have been organized at different times by the Province of Milan, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium, the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (National Museum of Visual Arts) in Montevideo, the Museu Brasiliero da Escultura in São Paulo, Brazil, and other art spaces.

In 2007, the sculptor established the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry in Manantiales, Uruguay. It serves an ideal place for artists who can find the inspiration there and share the ideas with fellows. ‘Catalogo Generale della scultura’, a catalog gathering the artworks Atchugarry has created since 1971 was published six years later.

Nowadays, Pablo Atchugarry shares his time between Lecco and Manantiales. He manages the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry, its international monumental sculpture park, and shares his experience through teaching and promoting art.

Achievements

• Pablo Atchugarry is an accomplished artist and sculptor praised for his unique talent to transform a huge block of marble into elegant and poetic pieces of art that are recognized all over the world.
  
  In 2002, Atchugarry’s contributions to art were marked by Michelangelo Award that he received in Carrara.
  
  The artworks by the sculptor are acquired by such permanent collections as the National Museum of Visual Arts, Montevideo, the Pérez Art Museum and Gary Nader Fine Art, Miami, Lercaro Museum, Bologna, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York City, and others.
  
  In 2019, one of Atchugarry pieces of art was purchased for $447,000 at Christie's in New York City.

Works

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  • Arpa

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  • Vittoria alata

  • Forma geométrica

  • Formas

  • White soul

  • Free Spirit

  • Statuary

  • Statuary

  • Fronde

  • La Donna

  • Marmol de Carrara

  • Vitesse

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Views

The sculptures of Pablo Atchugarry do not have the only true way of perception giving the viewers to examine each part of the composition and create their own interpretation of the meaning.

Quotations: "Art is the most sublime expression of man and for me it means a testimony of life."

Personality

Pablo Atchugarry prefers to work with a whole block of marble by his own hands almost without help from assistants. He uses white Carrara from Tuscany, gray stone from Bardiglio, black from Belgium, and pink from Portugal. Besides, Atchugarry works with patinas, ceramic, and different kinds of wood as well.

Pablo Atchugarry’s inspirational figures are Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, and Michelangelo.

Interests

• Artists

  Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, Michelangelo

Connections

Father:

Pedro Atchugarry Rizzo

Mother:

Maria Cristina Bonomi

References

• Fundación Pablo Atchugarry Website