TOLEDO, OH.- Human Landscape, a major exhibition of works by world renowned artist Jaume Plensa, comes to the
Toledo Museum of Art this summer.
Seven large outdoor sculptures, plus indoor installations that include a stainless steel curtain through which visitors can walk, are on view June 17-Nov. 6, 2016, in the Main Museum and on the grounds of the Museums Glass Pavilion. Some of the artists lesser-known works on paper, 22 drawings and 10 etchings covering a wide chronology, also are on display.
Organized by the Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee, the traveling exhibition is on view at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida before coming to Ohio. The Toledo Museum of Art is final venue to display these extraordinary works of art.
One of the unusual, compelling aspects of this exhibition is that the artists work will be shown both indoors and outdoors, said Amy Gilman, associate director of the Museum and curator of contemporary art. The addition of Plensas sculptures to surroundings that are familiar will give our visitors an opportunity to experience the campus in a new way. And, given the immediate popularity of Plensas Speigel when it was added to our collection, we believe the works themselves will really resonate with visitors.
Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1955, Plensa is internationally recognized for his large figurative sculptures and installations that produce enchanting and mystifying visions of the human form as landscape. His Spiegel, showing the silhouettes of two massive crouching figures made of a latticework of letters, was acquired for installation in the Museums Welles Sculpture Garden four years ago.
Plensa has won numerous national and international awards for his works, including the Medaille de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres presented by the French Ministry of Culture in 1993; the Government of Catalonias National Prize for Fine Art in 1997; an honorary doctorate in 2005 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and more recently, Spains National Prize for Fine Art in 2012 and the prestigious Velázquez Prize for the Arts in 2013.
The artists popularity crosses national boundaries. An exhibition devoted to Plensas work in 2011 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, England, resulted in the site receiving national recognition as Most Magnificent Attraction that year.
A significant portion of his work is on display in public spaces of cities in Spain, France, Japan, England, Korea, Germany, Canada, the United States and other countries. The Crown Fountain, unveiled in Chicagos Millennium Park in 2004, is one of Plensas largest projects and considered to be one of his most brilliant. The work led to many commissions, including Roots (2014) in Tokyo.