a place. We have to resort to the philosophy of theorists such as Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari to understand that Cobero’s work is not about the one
sculptural object itself but the crossings of the possibilities of material, shape
and process. .As Deleuze and Guattari declare, the “the intersection of all
concrete forms....It is the abstract Figure, or rather since it has no form itself,
the abstract machine of which each concrete assemblage is a multiplicity, a
becoming, a segment, a vibration.” Described this way, Corbero’s artistic works
conjure up in their emotional and tactical interaction a variety of feelings based
on this sense of abstraction working to create the possibilities of form.
Xavier Corbero was born in 1935 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona. Throughout his life he endured difficulty using his singular will and ego
behind his will to art to keep him going. Having survived smallpox and WWII,
he grew up exposed to art and the potent process of apprenticeship from his
father and grandfather while attending the Escuela Massana in Barcelona. He
comments, “It was a school for working apprentices who polished themselves
with school, which is how people should do it. You learn the craft working and
how to speak and draw and how to think geometrically.”
While learning his craft, his family life in Barcelona was marked by the presence
of a rich community of creative people that started during WWII. “Even with
the war, people were coming to the house, sculptors and poets and musicians
or something. After the war, it was very boring, there was no food, no books,
no films, no nothing. I left Barcelona when I was 19 and went to Sweden because I thought Sweden was a very modern country and it was socialist and it
was fantastic.” He later broadened his vision through further education at The
Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and Fundición Medici foundry in
Lausanne, a key period in his training.
In 1959, he moved back to Barcelona to Esplugues de Llobregat at that time a
village 11 km. outside of Barcelona, and today a suburb. “I remember a gallery
in Barcelona saying, ‘you’re crazy, it’s so far.’ In Spanish terms, it was very far
from Barcelona, back then there were no cars or taxis, but in American terms
(he lived in the U.S. through the 1970s and 1980s), not so far. In Europe, you
can travel the distance from Manhattan to Brooklyn and you could have two
presidents and six kingdoms.” This house in Esplugues was soon to turn into a
compound and artist retreat and later a gallery and outdoor sculpture garden
for his work. His house today is a continuing project that is his home, architectural project and experiment in making forms from the earth. “The space
is big, but it is only big mentally, because the space isn’t more than any lobby
in Chicago,” says Corbero. “What is good is the scale, if you get the scale right,
space stops being space to become mind. And this happens in a sculpture and
it happens in architecture.” Corberó’s art cum home has transformed into his
largest art work, a surreal scenography for an experience beyond what can be
labeled architecture.
His relationship to surrealism can be traced to his friendship with fellow Catalan artist, Salvador Dalí. “Dalí was my first patron,” says Corbero. “But I didn’t
know it until many years later. Somebody had called on the phone and said
‘Hello, this is Dalí’ and I thought it was a friend of mine pulling my leg so I
said ‘Yes, and I am the bishop’ and hung up.’ And that was it. Many years
later I had an exhibition in New York and Dali came every day. And I said to
him, ‘Why do you come every day,’ and he said, ‘because I find your work
very interesting. The only problem is that you are not very polite.’ ‘Why am I
not polite?’ I said ‘Because I bought every thing at your exhibition with Arturo
Lopez (a patron of Daliís who lived in Paris and was very very rich.)’” While
surrealism is part of his larger approach to space, his connection to place especially to the strength he finds in the earth of Catalonia. Thus while work can
KASIM-ARALIK 2010 • NATURA 31