The façade

Artist: Josep Maria Subirachs

Title: «The façade»

Year: 1965

Media: resin with bronze coating

Edition: 175 copies

Size: 25,5 x 35 x 14,5 cm 

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As we have already explained on other occasions, Subirachs is an artist who endows his works with a strong symbolic charge, where everything we see is not what it seems to the naked eye.

The first clue that the artist leaves is the title of the work, “The façade”. If we analyze the sculpture in depth, on its left side we can see a niche (cavity) with a figure that reminds of a chess pawn. The niche is a clear reference to architecture.

If we look at the sculpture from the side, we see that if we project that false chess pawn to the right, it draws a human face in profile. That profile forms a moulding that can be clearly appreciated when the sculpture is viewed from the front.

This moulding is another clear architectural reference that could be part of the façade of any building, hence the title of the work.

The false pawn that generates a face in profile, if we look closely, we realize that it is a spinnig human head that rotates on itself. Subirachs calls this element of his iconography the “turning head”.

«Turning Head», 1965

The niche and the molding as an allusion to architecture and the turned head as a human reference are very characteristic elements of this artistic stage of Subirachs.