Pablo Atchugarry
Pablo Atchugarry was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on August 23, 1954. His father Pedro, an art lover, perceived the skills and the interest that Pablo showed and stimulated him from childhood to take up painting. In his early days he expressed himself through painting, and gradually discovered other materials, such as cement, iron and wood. The first personal exhibition was staged in 1972 in the Municipality of Montevideo, and two years later he staged his first outdoor exhibition in Buenos Aires. At the end of the 70s, he made several trips to Europe to study, and in 1978 he staged his first personal exhibition in the city of Lecco, Italy. In 1979 he discovered marble as an extraordinary and fascinating material, and in Carrara he created his firs sculpture called “La Lumière”. In 1982, he decided to settle in Lecco as a result of his first major commission, “La Pietà”. As of 1989 he also made monumental pieces which are now part of private and public collections in American and European spaces. In 1996, he presented, in the park of the Governmental Palace of Uruguay his work “Semilla de la esperanza” [Seeds of hope]. |
Several projects were defined in 2001: a retrospective look in the Palazzo Isimbardi of Milan, documenting 10 years of artistic career, the making of the first 6-metre-high monument titled “Obelisco del terzo millennio”, currently located in the city of Manzano (Udine).
He won the national competition “Monuments alla civiltá e cultura del lavoro lecchese” to make a sculpture in homage to the work ethos, sculpted in a block of marble from Carrara weighing 33 tons and six metres high, inaugurated in Lecco in May 2002. In July 2002 he received the “Michelangelo Award” in Carrara in recognition of his artistic career. He created the work “Ideali” in homage to 50 years of the reign of Prince Rainero of Monaco, now located in the Avenue Princesse Grace of Monaco. He participated in the 50th Biennial of Venice with the work “Soñando La paz” [Dreaming peace], in 2003. In 2005, he exhibited in the National Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires. In June 2006, the Groningen Museum in Bruges, Belgium, organised a major retrospective with work from private international collections. In 2007 he completed “On the way of light” his greatest work to date, 8 metres high.
In that same year there was a travelling exhibition in Brazil, “El espacio plástico de la luz” [The plastic place of light], with a presentation by Luca Massimo Barbero, which began in the Cultural Centre Banco do Brazil in Brasilia, continuing in the sculpture Museum of São Paulo and in the Oscar Niemeyer Museum of Curitiba, and ended in the National Museum of Visual Arts of Montevideo, where works of different types were exhibited in marble and iron, created in the last fifteen years, and which featured his large and small format work.
One of his most recent projects was the opening of a second workshop in the city of Chorro (Maldonado), Uruguay, in 2006, where the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry was established with the intention of stimulating arts and creating a meeting point for artists in all disciplines. He currently lives and works in the city of Lecco, Lago de Como, Italy; where his museum was created in 1999; his website is www.pabloatchugarry.com.