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Pedro Juan Hormigo faces a lot of competition,
not only from the myriad foreign artists who have made Ibiza
their home, but also from the mass of artistic talent within
his own family.
At a rough guess he thinks there be thirty
of his relatives on the Island and he is sure there is something
artistic in the genes stemming back to his grandfather who
started creating religious icons and earrings in wood.
He keeps a simple crucifix made by his grandfather
before he was born and in its way it is still an inspiration
to him as he forges ahead with his own career as a sculptor.
Pedro was brought up in a house near where
Es Paradis now stands in Sant Antoni and was quick to carry
on the family tradition, carving a pendant from a small chunk
of the local baladra wood used in Ibiza for making flutes.
He still keeps that, too.
He was born on 4th February 1971 and at
31 he has now taught himself to handle computers and produced
his own CD which chronicles his career so far. It features
one of his sculptures as it revolves and shows a completely
different image on each side. Next he will be up there on
the World Wide Web, taking his family’s artistic heritage
to a new generation.
Pedro has exciting plans and with his boundless
enthusiasm and inherited artistic talent they are rapidly
coming to fruition as he starts work on a new studio in the
heart of the town.
His burning ambition, which seems to seep
from every pore, is for busts delicately sculpted in wax and
then cast in bronze. But already he is pushing his creativity
further and is experimenting with holes that seem to open
up the skulls and cheekbones as if he was delicately wielding
a surgeon’s knife.
“My brother was always the smart one,”
he says. “It was no surprise to the family when he finished
up as a University teacher in Barcelona.”
“But I always seemed to struggle with
my education and I couldn’t understand why I was having
problems. The ideas were always there, but I had difficulties
with words.”
“It wasn’t until much later that
one of my teachers explained that I was suffering from some
form of dyslexia. It was such a relief to discover I had been
suffering from nothing more than what we now know to be a
form of word blindness.”
With the same perseverance he applies to
his art, he has conquered the problem and now happily completes
word puzzles from newspapers and magazines.
It was a love affair that first took him
to New York about eight years ago and it was there he met
a sculptor from the Ukraine and learned from a different perspective.
“I never thought I would find the light I had left behind
in Ibiza,” he says now. “But in a strange way it
was there in New York too.”
It was back in Ibiza where Pedro’s
true inspiration lay, no more so than with his Uncle, Toni,
who is known on the Island as The Sculptor of Ibiza.”
(See the very first “Artists on Ibiza” featured
in Weekly Edition 035, Saturday 27th October 2001) Toni and
occasionally his brothers Leonardo, Luis, Paco and even young
sister Laly ran a successful workshop carving little heads.
It’s a family affair. His Uncle’s wife is also his
father’s sister. “His sons were like my brothers,”
he says.
Pedro’s apprenticeship has included
three years working in archaeology on the medieval walls in
Ibiza Town and he has also been involved with a curving fountain
in the shopping area in Ibiza Town. It spirals down like a
seashell and he points out the symbolism of male and female
roles in harmony.
“I think I want people to stop and
look, even if they hate what they see. Some people say it
is amazing and that it makes them freak out. The worst that
can happen is if it creates no reaction.”
His busts with a hole may also have skeletons
carved inside, such is his creative passion. He himself gets
fired up about the casting procedure, excitedly describing
the heat and the “I want to show the energy of how you
feel about someone, especially when you get to know their
personality. I want to give something else; though I believe
I need to do at least ten before I find the expression that
I want.”
It comes as something of a surprise when
Pedro suddenly confesses: “A lot of my creativity comes
when I am in the bathroom where the wax becomes really mellow.
For me, art is like giving birth.”
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Bronze
La creación de Eva
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Bronze
La muerte
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Bronze
Paso a la muerte
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Bronze
El parto de Dalí
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Bronze
Dos hacen uno
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Bronze
Los eucaliptos de Sirimusa
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Bronze
Colodri
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Bronze
Tanit
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Bronze
Bién América
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All
Pictures Courtesy of Pablo Garc?a Albizuri
Details:
If you should require any further information about Pablo
García Albizuri and his work then please don’t
hesitate to contact this office at your own convenience.
Sinclair Newton
sinclairnewton@ibizahistoryculture.com
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