Ricardo Santamaria

RICARDO SANTAMARIA

Born in 1920 in Saragosse, Spain, Ricardo Santamaria is an artist influenced by his work as woodworker and his Spanish roots to produce pieces that Dubuffet could have qualified as “Art Brut”: a pure art, far from any academic conventions. Santamaria has always worked seamlessly between painting and sculpture throughout his career. He started as a woodworker and was naturally driven to sculpture, but his aesthetical researches drove him to explore painting and its possible associations with sculpture, like his series of “sculpto-peintures.” Santamaria, through the use of waste materials in his work, tried to convey a critical view of the society and its overconsumption.
“From pieces of wooden floors, chairs, moldings or really anything, I organize systems of force and tension, of which the juxtaposition fit in the unity of my constructions. This connectivity allows me to provoke situations, sometimes unexpected, sometimes contradictory. The coordination of the volumes, empty or full, and the air moving between the forms, come from the great importance I give to articulations, which I sometime give to stabilize in a permanent way."