Alberto Corazón

(Madrid, 1942 - 2021)

The Poet’s Home

2007

Iron, signed and numbered (82/100)

42 x 12 x 12 cm

Inv. no. 36036



The importance of Corazón for the modernisation of the visual image of Spain’s large corporations and institutions since the period of the country’s transition to democracy should not overshadow his key role as a pioneer in
in Spain. Just like his graphic work, his art practice was defined by transversality and experimentation, often making use of interdisciplinary knowledge and mundane imagery.

His earlier conceptual works from the 1970s explore images and icons culled from the mass media, as well as their messages and supports (stills, negatives, printing processes). After interrupting his art practice in the 1980s to focus on his designing activity, in the 1990s Corazón returned to painting and sculpture.

Corazón addressed his work as an artist-designer with an attitude that recalls a surveyor measuring land. His drawing project Cuaderno del nómada (The Nomad’s Notebook, 1993) marked the start of a creative quest that triggered a reflection on the signs that travellers find along their journey: mundane everyday objects in which Corazón discovers something worthy of becoming an icon and, with it, an element that can articulate reality.

The suggestive iconography of Corazón’s language is clearly visible in his sculpture from 2007 The Poet’s Home. The symbolic objecthood of his practice conveys a liking for literature, timelessness and proximity bordering on
. Poetry and a creative exploration of signs and archetypes converge in this delicate house balanced on three pillars. The result is a work that functions like visual poetry.

The iron sculpture was cast from a mould used for an edition of one hundred. The work is accompanied by this brief reflection:

The work of art has no explanation.

It feeds off references alone.

The Poet’s Home speaks of an archetype firmly anchored in our psyche: home is the place where our soul resides, a space of intimate harmony, a refuge in often incomprehensible surroundings.

Is this home built on land?

on water?

And it does so, as could not be otherwise,

Illogically.

Alberto Corazón