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.”
Pedro Juan Hormigo
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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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Bronze
El movimiento de la vida
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Bronze
Correcaminos
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Busto
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Wood
La expulsión del Paraíso
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Busto
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Busto
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Busto
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Busto
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Busto |
All
Pictures Courtesy of Pedro Juan Hormigo
Details: If you should require any further information about Pedro Juan
Hormigo and his work then please don’t hesitate to contact this office
at your own convenience. |