A much-loved couple

Strolling further along the Moll de la fusta (timber dock), you’ll come across this congruent couple by Chilean artist Lautaro Díaz Silva, another photo favourite for those interested in the free sculpture which Barcelona beaches have to offer.

Slightly abstracted yet perfectly conveying that intense intimacy born of long trust, these figures in bronze, finished in a greenish patina, depict a couple, possibly lovers, observing the sea. An interesting detail is the man’s feet, which almost resemble a fish’s tail. Is he a merman who has come up out of the waves to woo his earthbound lover, or are they both mer-folk, who have come ashore to watch the sunrise together? Díaz’s decision not to raise the pair onto a pedestal works well to bring them closer to their public.

The artist’s passionate expressionism is equally as deft and sculptural in the way he applies paint to his very tactile canvases. His figurative work is similarly pensive. The motif of a male and female couple is recurrent, whether convulsive and passionate, or in repose. In his abstracted works and videos, he makes vibrant use of colour and iconic forms that recur in an almost ritualistic manner while the basic elements of water, air, fire and earth are always in close proximity.

Now resident in Germany, Lautaro Díaz Silva focuses more on oils and video, exhibiting regularly in Berlin and Barcelona among other cities. Other Barcelona works include a homage to Salvador Allende, installed in plaça Salvador Allende, on 11 September 1997—to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coup d’état that replaced Allende’s government with Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship. You can see an identical version of it—Allende’s head mounted on the wall—in the camp de Mart, in Tarragona. Another installation, To Victor Jara, is located in Barcelona’s Plaça Karl Marx.

La Parella (The Couple) by Lautaro Díaz Silva, 1998. Moll de Bosch i Alsina (Moll de la fusta). Coordinates: 41.378394, 2.181269

References:

http://www.lautaro-diaz.de