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In the mid-1950s, sculptor Moisés Villelia gave up figuration in favour of a series of carved wood pieces linked formally to the sculptures of Henry Moore. Shortly afterwards, he began to work on a new kind of experimental sculpture based on plant materials. His work began to be recognised following his exhibition at Barcelona’s Club 49 in 1958, capturing the attention of critics like Alexandre Cirici and artists like Ángel Ferrant, who would both write about it in 1960, analysing its lack of emphasis and its human dimension. Villelia worked in lightweight, mobile sculptures, as well as in reticular, organicist series, such as the Telas de araña (Spiders’ Webs). From 1969 onwards, during his time in Argentina and Ecuador, he came into contact with Pre-Columbian art and with new materials that added to an original, mobile and fragile body of work, always remaining within the languages of abstraction. To quote the artist himself: “Whenever I incorporate a form, I am already convinced of its existence because I have seen it; I try not to let fantasy affect me, I simply envisage the reducing or prolonging of an organism which grows from its natural state to become existent. This is why I can work with the most modest of materials.”

Carmen Fernández Aparicio