Juan Munõz

Juan Muñoz (Madrid, Spain, 1953 - Ibiza, Spain, 2001) studied in London at the Central School of Art and Design (1976-77, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and at the Croydon School of Art (1978-80), where he was a student of Bruce McLean (Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 1944). In 1982, he won a Fulbright scholarship, which took him to the USA to study at the Pratt Institute in New York where he did, simultaneously an art residency at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center.

Self-named as a "storyteller", the artist worked on figurative sculpture, creating the illusion of narrative with his figures in an atmosphere of mutual interaction. In his late work, Muñoz transformed the environment or space where his sculptures lived as it happened in the exhibition he held at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. He carried out several public art projects, such as 13 laughing at each other, a work offered by the sculptor to the city of Porto in 2001, the year that the city was the European Capital of Culture. 

Besides being a sculptor, Muñoz has produced audio artistic projects (such as Building for Music with Alberto Iglesias, his brother-in-law, and A Registered Patent, with music by Alberto Iglesias and voice by John Malkovich, presented at Documenta), drawing, has published essays, like Segment (1990), he wrote plays (Will it be a Likeness? written by Muñoz and John Berger, with performances by John Berger and other actors at Theater am Turm, Frankfurt, Germany).

The first exhibition of Juan Muñoz took place in 1984 at the Galeria Fernando Vijande in Madrid and since then Muñoz's work has been extensively shown in America and Europe, among others: Musée Camille Claudel, France (2019); MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2018); The Met Breuer, New York, U.S.A. (2018); Electricity Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (2015); Museu Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2008); Tate Modern, London (2008); Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., U.S.A. (2001); Tate Modern, London (2001); Dia Center for the Arts, New York, U.S.A. (1999); Venice Biennial (1997, 1993, 1986); Documenta (2002, 1992). It is also represented in numerous private and public collections.

In 2000, he received the National Prize of Plastic Arts of Spain.

PS, dezembro 2020