Contributions from writers and curators, including Peter Murray, Jeremy Strick, Lewis Biggs, Laurie Peake, and an interview by Clare Lilley, provide deeper context on Plensa’s approach. The book reflects on his ability to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, transforming space and prompting viewers to reflect on time, place, and the connections between art and environment. The volume also considers Plensa’s long-standing interest in public art, his willingness to engage audiences outside traditional galleries, and the way his work finds new meaning in the open air of Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Jaume Plensa was born in Barcelona in 1955 and is recognized internationally as a leading sculptor of the human figure and spirit. Since the 1980s, he has created major public artworks around the world, often using materials such as steel, iron, glass, and water. His work explores themes of language, identity, and the inner life, and is widely praised for its poetic sensibility. Plensa first visited Yorkshire in 1993 and was deeply inspired by the contrast between the region’s industrial and natural landscapes. Over the years, he developed a close connection with the area, culminating in the major exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park documented in this book. His career includes significant works like Dream near Liverpool and the Crown Fountain in Chicago, as well as collaborations with institutions and cities worldwide.
In essence, this book offers a comprehensive look at Plensa’s artistic journey, focusing on how his sculptures engage with and transform landscape and gallery spaces, and providing insight into both the technical and spiritual dimensions of his practice.
Book Details:
Large hardcover (about 10" x 12"), 2012. with dust jacket. About 160 pages and profusely illustrated. Signed and inscribed by the artist on the title page. Tight and square binding. Clean pages with no readily visible underlining or writing.
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Jaume Plensa i Suñé born 23 August 1955) is a Spanish visual artist, sculptor, designer and engraver. He is a versatile artist who has also created opera sets, video projections and acoustic installations. He worked with renowned Catalan theatrical group La Fura dels Baus. He is better known for his large sculptures made up of letters and numbers. Plensa was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He left the studies of fine arts in Barcelona and continued to train in a self-taught way.
Plensa's works include the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois, which opened in July 2004. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 feet (15 m) tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos on the inward faces. In the summer of 2007, he participated in the Chicago public art exhibit, Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet. Another Plensa piece is Blake in Gateshead in North East England, a laser beam that on special occasions shines high into the night sky over Gateshead's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
In 2007, working closely with a group of local ex-miners, he was also commissioned to create a new work on the landmark site of a former colliery near St Helens, Merseyside, as part of the Big Art Project, a major national public art initiative linked to Channel 4. Unveiled in spring 2009, Dream consists of an elongated white structure 20 metres (66 ft) tall, weighing 500 tons, which has been carved to resemble the head and neck of a young woman with her eyes closed in meditation. The structure is coated in sparkling white Spanish dolomite, as a contrast to the coal which used to be mined there.
On 16 June 2008, Plensa's sculpture of a listening glass entitled Breathing was dedicated by the incumbent Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, as a memorial to journalists killed whilst undertaking their work. The sculpture in steel and glass sits atop a new wing of Broadcasting House in London. At 22:00 GMT each evening a beam of light will be projected from the sculpture extending 1 km into the sky for 30 minutes to coincide with the BBC News at Ten.
In 2010, Plensa's Alchemist was installed in front of the Stratton Student Center, facing the main entrance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a large, hollow seated figure similar to other contemporary Plensa figures, except that it is composed of numerals and mathematical symbols, to honor MIT's traditional STEM-focused teaching and research. The sculpture was donated anonymously on the occasion of MIT's 150th anniversary. On 21 September 2010, Spillover II was unveiled in Atwater Park in Shorewood, Wisconsin, United States. A 260 cm (102 in) tall statue consisting of steel letters welded together in the shape of a man on top of a concrete base.
El alma del Ebro was created for the International Exposition in Zaragoza, the theme of which was "Water and Sustainable Development". It is eleven meters high, the sculpted letters representing cells of the human body which is over 60% water. Its white letters and hollow structure invite the viewer to look inside and reflect on the relationship between human beings and water. A similar sculpture entitled Singapore Soul (2011) was installed in front of the Ocean Financial Centre in Singapore. And an ensemble piece entitled I, You, She, He... with three figures composed of the letters, each seated on large flat boulders, can be seen at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
From May to mid-August 2011, the work Echo was displayed in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. In November 2012, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York unveiled a 32-ton sculpture by Plensa called Laura. The 20-foot (6.1 m) tall sculpture is composed of 20 massive pieces of marble from the south of Spain. In 2013, Plensa installed a sculpture named Ainsa I at the entrance of the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis. In 2017, Love was installed in the Frisian city of Leeuwarden, Netherlands, as the city was the European Capitol of Culture in 2018.
In 2019, the MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona organized the most ambitious solo exhibition in his hometown, curated by the museum's director, Ferran Barenblit. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Modern Art Moscow, where it achieved notable success. In 2020, Dreaming was installed outside of the Richmond-Adelaide Centre in Toronto. Also in 2020, Behind the Walls was installed outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Water's Soul (2021) is along the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway in the Newport section of Jersey City.