Marta MOREU

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Andorra : Andorra (Galeria Mama Maria)
Belgium : Bruxelles (Granero Art Gallery)
Canada : Montreal (Galery Han Art)
France : Paris (Galerie Arcturus)
United States : Charlotte (Gallery Hayes George, Gallery Mc Call Fine Art) ; Ketchum (Gallery DeNovo); Miami (Gallery Swenson) ; New York (Gallery Revel)
Spain : Badajoz (Museo Etnografico de Olivenza, Centro Cultural Caja Badajoz) ; Barcelona (Galeria Art Petritxol, Galeria Espai d’Art, Galeria Lleonart, Galerie Putxet) ; Girona (Galleria AG) ; Sanxeno (Galeria Pilar Parra) ; Sitges (Galeria Agora 3) ; Terrassa (Galeria Espai d’Art)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
England : London (Gallery Halcyon)
Belgium : Brussels (Granero Art Gallery)
Spain : Barcelona (MEAM – European Museum of Modern Art, Cultural Center Cotxeres de Sants, University of Barcelona, Galeria Jordi Barnadas, Galeria Art Petritxol, Galeria Lleonart, Galeria Granero) ; Madrid (Galeria Jorge Alcolea, Galeria Kreisler) ; Pollenca (Galerie Bennassar)  ; Sanxeno (Galeria Pilar Parra) ; Sitges (Galeria Agora 3) ; Terrassa (Galeria Espai d’Art) ; Valencia (Galeria Pizarro)
United States : Boise (Stewart Gallery) ; Charlotte (Gallery Hayes George) ; Ketchum (Gallery DeNovo)  ; Miami (Gallery Swenson, Institut culturel d’Espagne, Bakehouse exhibition) ; New York (Susan Eley Gallery, Gallery Revel) ; Seattle (Gallery Friesen)
France : Paris (Galerie Arcturus) ; Pont l’Abbé (Galerie Patricia Oranin)

ART FAIRS
Belgium : Affordable Art Bruselas, Brussels ; Gante, Gand
Canada : Toronto Art Fair, Toronto
France : St’Art, Strasbourg (Galerie Arcturus)
Hong Kong : Affordable Art Fair, Hong Kong ; Art Fair Hong Kong
India : India Art Fair, New Delhi
Malaysia : Art Expo Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur ; Kuala Lumpur Art Fair, Kuala Lumpur
Singapore : Affordable Art Fair, Singapore ; Singapore Art Fair, Singapore
Spain : ArteExpo, Barcelone ; Feria Arte, Madrid ; X Merc’Art, Terrassa ; Feria de Arte, Marbella
United States : Bellevue Art Exhibition, Washington ; Art Palm Beach Art Fair, Miami ; Art Chicago, Chicago

BIBLIOGRAPHY
2005 : M. Moreu, B. Porcel, « Marta Moreu », De Novo Gallery, Sun Valley
2001 : M. Moreu, « Marta Moreu, Escultures », Art Petrixol, Barcelona

FILMS AND TELEVISION
2001 : « C’est le bouquet », film de Jeanne Labrune, 2 sculptures presented
2000 : « La Noche Avierta », Pedro Ruiz’s emission, TVE 2, 4 sculptures presented

The art world is currently witnessing a clear return to the figure, particularly the human figure, and to landscape, with a strong presence of the urban landscape. The rich experimentation of the 20th-century avant-garde movement, comparable only to the intense era of Renaissance conquests, was succeeded by the academicism of the abstract and the hermetic. This return to a perspective that could be called human represents, in fact, less a phenomenon in itself than a process of amplification, openness, and humanism.

It is within this framework that we should situate Marta Moreu, who, very early in her career, began working with figuration. Her sculpture thus went through an initial period characterized by two poles of attraction: realism and a certain lyricism. But in a state that we could describe as pure or linear: each piece conveyed what it showed—a person, an animal, an object—transported into a lyrical dimension. Everything was simple and captivating then.

Now, it’s the same, but after a refinement of the motifs and with an intensity of the inner creative force. These human beings, these horses, appear to be treated not as they are supposed to be, but with an austere, stark stylistic intent, even at close visual contact, with a certain dramatic introspection and an undeniable mastery of technique. I emphasize: austerity and intensity, with this obsessive flight from heights, from balance in the air, and an image of the circus world that clearly points here toward a symbolism of existence.
Marta Moreu is a rigorous, natural, and evocative sculptor.

By Baltasar PORCEL (translated from French)

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By chance, while walking down a narrow, cobbled street between walls of varying Gothic styles and lined with art galleries, I stumbled upon a sculpture displayed in a shop window: a powerful titan who, with the strength of his legs, was opening a bronze semicircle upon which he was leaning. This sculpture inspired in me a magnificent impression of balance and tension.

In my ignorance, I decided that the artist who had created such a powerful and impactful piece could only be a man very hardened by life.

And that very afternoon, I decided to clear up my imaginary confusion by sharing a coffee with Marta to talk about the sculpture.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to share other artistic adventures with the much-admired sculptor Marta Moreu, adventures born of chance and thoughtful work. His kind and gentle manner has always been enriching and contrasts with the vigor, harshness, and grandeur of his magnificent work.

By Enrico Majo, Actor (translated from French)

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MARTA MOREUS’S UNIVERSAL BEING

“Art is the soul in the object, not the object itself.” – Apelles Fenosa

One of the most paradigmatic situations of modern man is that of the terribly active and tireless individual, relentlessly pursued by competitiveness and frenetic action. As a skilled interpreter of the contemporary world, Marta Moreu knows how to transpose the inherent concepts of movement, activity, tension, and displacement into her sculptures, transcribing the most contemporary anxieties and attitudes. The various themes she explores (balancing, sports, dance, transportation, mythology, etc.) all underscore this concept of dynamism and mobility so characteristic of her work. This is why the figures in the scenes she depicts seem to fly and suspended in the air in an almost immaterial way.

It follows that even though sculpture was traditionally an artistic practice based on the weight of matter, structural density, and volumetric gravity, her sculptures, although in bronze, depart from these parameters and offer lightness, agility, and brevity, while emphasizing the energy and speed characteristic of the 21st century. It is from this perspective that she distorts the bodies she represents, lengthening and stretching their limbs, creating stylized forms that explore ease, fluidity, and vivacity.

From her earliest beginnings, Marta Moreu’s art has centered on a symbolic reality drawn from an authentic autobiographical narrative that leads us into a world of memories through vivid sensations and the path of emotions. She seeks to understand the world through the lives of her characters, which is why her sculptures use matter to conceal any introspective reference. This matter in no way refers to the external shell, to physical appearance, but to the secret essence seen through the filter of emotions and lived experience. This spirit is achieved through an austere discipline, a method that lays bare the bodies, stripping them of their anecdotal attributes until they are reduced to primordial images, to pure principles imbued with memories and recollections.

A patient observer of reality, attentive to maintaining a constructive and volumetric structure, the artist imbues her creations with a metaphysical atmosphere that evokes vivid scenes, realized through a certain symbolic vision. Subject to a rigorous internal order, yet also bathed in an ethereal poetry, Marta Moreu’s human figures emerge from a secret timelessness and an unreal space, while being created with a spontaneity and freshness that are methodically measured and controlled.

Her work possesses the rich Catalan artistic tradition, absorbed through her creative origins and the diverse aesthetic roots she absorbed during her travels. To this, Moreu added a Mediterranean influence, thus embracing the classical heritage, revised and corrected by the canons of Art Nouveau, and tinged with surrealist presuppositions. This personal synthesis transports us to a world of shifting reality, constantly veiling and unveiling itself, where time and space are in perpetual flux. A singular language laden with constant premonitions, eloquent silences, remembered pasts, and real experiences locked within memory.

Her work evokes an ambiguity that is both appealing and captivating: the protagonists’ attitudes are simultaneously real and unreal, modern and classical, familiar and distant, structurally structured yet freely elaborated. They possess the freedom of abstraction and the control of figuration, existing in that liminal space where the rational and the emotional intertwine, constantly torn between reality and fiction.

Her theme focuses on the human being, even attributing to them a totemic lineage. The human being she creates is a person who confronts themselves and faces a new destiny with dignity. To understand Marta Moreu’s work, one must recognize that her primary concern revolves around the other, especially when it comes to the profound difficulty of truly knowing them. This is why she always speaks of universal man and considers the condition of the individual as an inaccessible fact: she knows that the individual wages an endless struggle to preserve this difficulty. She desires to conquer the most hidden secrets of the mind, and that is why her quest leads her to explore the truth of being.

Each work could be the emblem of a lived experience: her figures are naked, devoid of physiognomic features, they wear nothing superfluous, and no worldly anecdote accompanies them. The bodies elongate or contort, transforming into light, weightless structures. Marta Moreu thus does not deal with anthropomorphic forms but with force and vital energy.

This is why she admires various sculptors who, throughout history, have given a unique personality to her work. She readily cites Rodin as one of her favorite sculptors, for his expressiveness and romanticism, although she is also very drawn to the spirituality and austerity emanating from Giacometti’s work, which stems from the concept formulated by the artist himself in 1961: “One cannot reach the universal… except through the most particular reality possible.” But there is no doubt that she keeps a keen eye on late 19th and early 20th-century Expressionism, to which she owes part of her heritage.

She nevertheless retains a marked preference for African sculpture, classical Greek and Roman mythology, Egyptian art, and Oriental aesthetics. If she feels so connected to ancestral origins and primitive arts, it is not only because they suggest formal solutions to her, but also because these cultures managed to produce sculptures that established a spiritual relationship between the work and its model. This participation of the archaic, of the lessons of primitive art, and of this return to origins is, in this case, a renewing, revelatory, and cathartic contribution that unites civilizations, cultures, and eras in the representation of the essence of humankind.

His extensive training and apprenticeship in various cities led him to focus on the study of the human body, which has always been his point of reference. However, the expressionistic importance of form, the structural tension, and the distortion of certain nude bodies in challenging poses—and in some cases, poses pushed to the limits of their capabilities—configure a sculpture that departs from the traditional foundations of representing the silhouette, using it instead as a pretext for analyzing the very condition of human existence.

His sculpted pieces, in the form of small tableaux featuring isolated figures, couples, or groups, seem to represent his own existential circumstances. The human figure maintains itself in a state of unstable equilibrium within spatial coordinates that intensify the individual’s position in relation to their enigmatic destiny. A hero struggling between misery and joy, truth and irony, reality and dream, happiness and bitterness… ultimately, an individual battling constantly shifting opposing forces. This dialogue of polarities is also manifested in the structural framework established, for example, between the horizontal and the vertical, fullness and emptiness, floating and contact, in order to achieve the tension inherent in true harmony.

His figures are suspended, balanced between proximity and distance. They emerge from the void that surrounds them and allude to finite humanity and infinite space. Furthermore, the artist seeks to create a space that separates the viewer from the sculpture, so that this space becomes part of the sculpture itself. A void that, in reality, is a space filled with divine and sacred presence. His figures slip into this silent void in the same way that icons, frontal and solemn, are linked to a space that becomes too vast for humankind. His volumes do not merely occupy space; they also create the space that surrounds them: the figures are not saturated with presence, but rather, on the contrary, with absence.

All figurative connotations are transformed by the vibrant force of the gesture, which unravels forms until the bodies become invertebrate. Tension stirs within, and the movement begins even before the act occurs, before it becomes visible, thus allowing only attitudes to be evoked and avoiding any theatrical gesticulation. What she seeks, in her pursuit of imponderableness, is to reach the human soul, this particular vision of the sacred in art. To this end, she abandons the classical canons of proportion and stylizes bodies, always with the aim of bringing matter and spirit closer together. Ultimately, we discover that all of Marta Moreu’s art is a continuous effort aimed at materializing her inner experience. The direct transposition of mental impulses into matter causes it to be transformed and sublimated, practically to the point of disappearing.

The delicate, soft forms offer a total, profound, and above all, silent nudity. The elongated figures, with their slender, lithe bodies, seem unwilling to communicate, for introspection and reflection keep them isolated from their surroundings.

It is for all these reasons that we can say that in her works, beauty—the human aspiration least easily relinquished—departs from classical figuration, which had reduced it to rules based on the harmony of proportions and symmetry. The classical world prefigured the formal attributes of beauty, not beauty itself. Beauty in its absolute state would not be linked to the qualities of matter, but to the spirit, to subjectivity. The beauty that Moreu champions is that of knowledge, always limitless, for it, physical beauty is merely ephemeral and partial. A beauty without a face, without features, which finds its aesthetic in inner balance. Thus, his work responds to an inner need that compels him to materialize his personal anxieties.

The treatment of the material is rough, and it possesses a textural modeling that gives form to the inner turmoil and the physical humanity of his figures. In this way, his figures suggest an internal vibration, as if they were constantly in motion. To achieve this sensation, the artist very often leaves the imprint of his fingers and tools, a characteristic that makes a material as dense and heavy as metal radiate energy. His fingers tirelessly traverse the raw material, gathering it, pinching it, and caressing it, allowing his hand to freely capture the internal tension and vibration of the figure depicted, imbuing it with a sense of the organic.

The patinas, finished in varying chromatic tones (reddish-brown, ochre, greenish, etc.), lend a certain pictorial quality, while their rough, coarse appearance underscores the power, warmth, and texture of the material, creating an immediate and powerful impact.

A world of internal resonances, those of Marta Moreu, immerses us in the complexities of existence and the psychological turmoil of certain figures, who thus acquire an additional symbolic value. Depending on the viewer’s intention, several interpretations may emerge, for example, behind the tightrope walker in his precarious position, or beyond the centaur—half man, half horse—or even behind the groups traveling at high speed in a car.

Thus, the cognitive response generated by observing a work by Marta Moreu will differ according to the cultural, intellectual, and human perspective of the viewer. Observing the circus scene, for example, some will see only the tightrope walker’s difficult balancing act, others will interpret it as representing humanity in precarious equilibrium, attempting to navigate various daily situations, yet others will see it as the constant interplay between the individual and their environment, and still others will discover in it the inner instability of a being subject to a destiny that continually buffets them, or see in it the personal challenge of resisting the weight of society.

The Birth of a Vocation

Introduced to the world of sculpture at a very young age, she entered the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona in 1980 to systematize and organize her self-taught vocation; a vocation combined with her passion for pedagogy, through the study of Educational Sciences at the Blanquerna Teacher Training College. Since then, the fascination, magic, and freedom of creation have taken root in her so deeply that from that moment on, these became closely linked to her in various different contexts.

But the true catalyst for the artist was her time in Minneapolis—at the end of her university studies—and her apprenticeship in a ceramics workshop where she discovered new techniques. Since then, her passion for knowledge and research has led her to numerous moves and changes of residence, on an intense path of personal experiences and surprising artistic experiments. The next step was the German city of Düsseldorf, where she dedicated herself to the study of German Expressionism, a language that would later reappear in her work. Back in her home country, Marta Moreu began her frenetic career, combining teaching, her own artistic practice, and commissions until 1992, when she flew to Paris. There, she stayed for a year and developed her own more personal artistic language in the studio on Rue Lavoisier. She then settled back in Barcelona and moved into a studio in the Sarria neighborhood, which she shared with her sister, an antique furniture restorer.

In 1994, she went to Madrid, where her sculptural work took a significant turn. It was there that she made contact with foundries and discovered the vast technical possibilities offered by bronze. Until then, she had worked with materials such as terracotta, wood, or stone, which prevented her from fully exploring certain aspects of movement—something she was able to achieve through casting. This process of molding molten metal opened up a range of expressive possibilities that Marta Moreu had not been able to develop until then, and that is why it seems appropriate to place this particular moment as the starting point of the most fruitful phase of her career. But the artist, keen to follow her work’s development step by step, doesn’t leave her original pieces in the hands of the foundries. Instead, she maintains a very close relationship with her creations and carefully oversees the entire process: she re-examines the wax models, personally assembles and mounts the pieces, examines and corrects the bronze casting, supervises the welding, creates the bases, and applies the finishes and patinas. All of this means that from the first day of a sculpture’s conception until it is finally materialized, the journey is long, and several months pass before the final piece is completed.

In 1998, she returned to Barcelona and moved her studio from Sarria to Esplugues de Llobregat, where she has a large, bright space; a spacious warehouse that allows her to create large-format, large-scale pieces that are highly sought after by art galleries in the United States. Before the end of the year, her tireless energy led her back to Paris, where she settled in the 6th arrondissement, a district steeped in artistic and cultural tradition. This allowed her to connect with galleries in France, Belgium, and the United States with whom she currently works. Her second stay in the French capital represented a consolidation for Marta Moreu, both professionally and conceptually, and a transcendental milestone in her career, although she could not have imagined that a year after her return to Barcelona, ​​it would mean starting from scratch: the pieces she had created, all the studies and sketches, the models, etc., accumulated during this period burned in the truck that was taking them home. It was a humbling experience that she faced with energy and positivity, keeping her focus on the present and telling herself that ultimately she had lost nothing and that her personal experience and everything she had learned were her greatest assets. Since then, she has divided her time between Barcelona and Begur, a corner of the Empordà where she found the contact with nature that is fundamental to her creations.

In addition to these various stays, her numerous trips to China, Africa, and India have allowed her to acquire extremely enriching life experiences that have complemented her professional skills, technique, mastery, talent, dexterity, practice, and methods, leading her to view sculpture as a unique and distinct way of living and communicating.

She thus refines her technique and craft, essential elements for her in achieving the desired expression, that intimate connection established between the artist, the work, and the viewer. To achieve this, Marta Moreu’s artistic language is based on the human figure, a constant reference that, according to the artist herself, constitutes the language that resonates most deeply with each individual, the one that transcends all cultures, all languages, and all eras.

Since then, her work has been based on a naturalistic study of the human figure, a figure often depicted in unexpected poses and situations that lead us to an interpretation of illusionistic realism, in the vein of Magritte or De Chirico. It is precisely this coexistence between the classical and contemporary worlds that produces such surprising images, with the juxtaposition of elements belonging to different universes. Marta Moreu employs these strategies in her work to unsettle the viewer, with compositions that have taken, and continue to take, as their main theme the rupture and breaking of established forms. Changes of scale to emphasize certain elements at the expense of others, or the absence of particular elements, which are suggested so that the viewer completes the work themselves, are other artistic devices she uses to achieve a specific expression.

Her interest in paradox, enigma, contradiction, and irony, the blending of past and present, and the coexistence of rationality and surrealist influences, leads her to the balance of polarities found in the work of many historical Catalan artists (Gaudí, Miró, Dalí, etc.), artists who knew how to maintain a dialogue between restraint and excess, between restraint and extravagance.

The fragment, present or absent, mentioned or imagined, invites us to participate in the idea of ​​totality that we reconstruct through our gaze, involving us as much in the artwork as in its surrounding environment. Marta Moreu’s work thus possesses a spatial dimension, allowing us to fully grasp its purpose only when it occupies a space and is contextualized within its host location.

The fundamental characteristic of his sculpture lies in his ability to combine empty and filled space, to unite the relationship between the part and the whole, to integrate the organic and the geometric, and to construct images and concepts from fragmentation. This approach is closely linked to his unique conception of art, which has developed very coherently through the use of three-dimensional language—a language that unequivocally expresses his mastery of form and space.

Recurring Themes

Marta Moreu’s subjects of inspiration are diverse and can be said to derive from two main universes: on the one hand, the everyday world and its environment (family, couples, children, travel, sports, women, the circus and dance, the world of music…), and on the other hand, the world of the imagination (goddesses and nymphs, ladders and levitation, the animal kingdom), always treated as a series of frenetic movements, overflowing mobility, and exultant dynamism. These are beings transformed into spirits that move and are endowed with intangible values: an agitation that drives their evolution to the point of giving them tangible signs of life.

Above all, she delves into the everyday situations of human beings, the experiences and vicissitudes of our time, current customs, and, moreover, she tries to capture the sense of competitiveness that exists in our society. Music is one of her sources of inspiration and her true passion. She has always felt this art intensely, and it should be noted that she always works to the sound of classical music and that many of her works take as their starting point certain operas and concerts that have marked her, such as Ophelia, Das Rheingold, or Faust. As a keen sportswoman, she also gravitates towards themes related to sports with direct contact with nature.

In fact, it is impossible to separate Marta Moreu’s sculptural work from her way of being, her way of thinking, her tastes, or the atmosphere in which she is immersed. Her figures run, dance, jump, travel, perform difficult balances, float in the air… and almost never have both feet on the ground to freeze the action in a precise moment. The woman climbing a suspended ladder, the man preparing to descend a spiral, the rider trotting in step with his horse, the tightrope walker performing difficult acrobatic feats, the juggler displaying skillful and deft acts, the surfer struggling to stay upright on the invisible wave, the little girl flying her kite, or the couple joining forces to move forward together, their gaze fixed on the horizon: these are bodies in balance, suspended in space, constantly defying gravity (some holding on with one hand, others on one foot, or simply clinging to the void). All of this symbolizes the struggles, the states of mind, or the transcendental questions that haunt modern humanity. Ultimately, she seeks to grasp the mystery that makes them unique and human.

On the other hand, she also draws inspiration from mythology and ancient, mysterious legends, which serve as her iconographic source. Her reading of classical texts leads her back to Mediterranean poetry and the search for the roots of her culture. If there is a particular force weighing on Marta Moreu’s entire oeuvre, it is undoubtedly the sense of “Mediterraneanness.” Women who take on the air of goddesses, who transcend the mere presence of being to the point of no longer evoking any overly human attitude, but only the great fundamental movements. Goddesses of the sea, of creation, or of the air, they embody universal feelings, myth, and the secret of life.
The female figures are metaphorical allegories of nature that assume a sacred character and allude to infinity, openness, and unfolding. They are presences that bring us closer to the idea of ​​temporality, of beginnings, of dawn, of the foundation of all things. Indeterminate creatures, in motion, fluid like air or sea, elements evoked rather than defined. Light, flexible, ethereal, and ascending forms that convey a vision of constant movement, existential breath, and the embodiment of vital processes.

Verticality is also a crucial concept in Marta Moreu’s sculpture, a verticality that reaches its most pristine point with her figures on ladders. Elongated, threadlike figures, reduced to mere threads of matter, rise above towering ladders to connect with the cosmos. A fragility of the boundary that seems to dissolve into nothingness, which the artist emphasizes visually to represent the existential condition of modern man, confronted by the surrounding void and the difficulty of communicating with others. The series “Variations on Scales” shows us a fragile man surviving in a limited environment, on the verge of dissolution, struggling energetically to remain upright under the constant threat of falling into the abyss. To capture the difficulties and uncertainties of this man confronting his destiny, Moreu strips away matter, trampling it until he obtains unsettling vestiges on the brink of disintegration.

In the same vein, the series of levitations brings us closer to man as an entity, to the soul, to the breath of psychic life. The individual, imprisoned by his ephemeral condition, surrenders and raises his head and gaze toward the beyond, searching for answers to satisfy all his questions. The earthly distance of these floating figures seems to send them toward a new destiny, facing hope. They are suspended in a timeless realm, traveling through space and rising as if in transit between life and death. Gradually in her work, the actions she represents become less and less worldly and more and more spiritual, while remaining ever more open in order to achieve harmony with the universe.

Marta Moreu’s other major theme is the animal, the humanized vision of animals that allows her to speak ironically and satirize society. She has created an entire menagerie, poised between reality and fiction, with which she draws parallels to the human condition. The genesis of these humanized animals, or these animalized humans, takes shape in her humorous view of life and allows her to offer a metaphorical and symbolic interpretation of humankind and its circumstances. Hybrid beings that combine human intelligence and animal instinct, and that dance, play, move, read, or paint themselves; beings with a disturbing appearance, yet softened by a wry humor.

Ultimately, Marta Moreu’s work is a body of work full of lived experience and constant reflection, of feelings and emotions that arise and mirror human relationships; it is expressed through austere forms, yet with great visual impact. Her work moves beyond mere stylistic exercises or formal achievements to focus on self-reflection and introspective examination.

There is always this intention to capture the ephemeral, the fleeting, the passage of time for this universal man… a concept intrinsic to life and so difficult to transpose into inert matter. To capture the already lost present, to preserve the intensity of the moment, to retain the elusive immediacy, to freeze the traces of life… this permanence of transience in impossible gazes is, ultimately, Marta Moreu’s objective, as she explores her personal and collective memory through references that denote the struggle against time in the name of life.

By Conxita Oliver
Member of the International Association of Art Critics (translated from French)