María Gamundí

Maria Gamundí


Maria Gamundi was born in 1952 in Caracas (Venezuela). She studied at the Prati Institute of NewYork and the Scuola del Libro of Urbino. She lives and works in Versilia, dividing her time between Monteggiori and Pietrasanta. Since 1973 she has held important personal exhibitions in Italy, Europe, the United States and Latin America. Her female nudes exude a sculptural force exalted by her deep knowledge of the materials, as well as an instinctive joie de vivre which well represents her strong Latin American roots.





The Work of María Gamundí



"....the artist appeal to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation - and the subtle but invincible; e conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity - the dead to the living and the living to the unborn"

Josef Conrad in the Preface to
the second edition of The Nigger
of the Narcissus.

Maria Gamundí

The origins of particularly fine artists seem to lie, as Conrad suggests, in some magic ability which a few rare people have, to speak from deep inside, a universal language. What is spoken by such artists is truth about us and our world, basic laws, and relationships which somehow the artist is able to perceive. She or he describes for the rest of us those feelings and where they lie, in some outward form - some color, or shape or sound - fashioned to appeal to as many of us as possible. This creation, which we call art, helps each one of us in turn to search for and, hopefully, find that same inner place and those same joyous feelings.

And this searching energy, springing as it does from inside, is creative and positive. in surging out to shape art it is a tempering force to that exterior one which deals in accumulating power and material things.

Being led thus by the artist and by art away from everyday difficulties to a common interior place of thought and emotion, from whence we all originate, gives us an enormous release, a freedom, like being children again.

To do this, the true artist obviously cannot lie. And the more truthfully, the more artfully she or he leads us and joins us in that "solidarity' Conrad speaks of , the greater will be the resulting art form. This is why all great art is about freedom and truth, and why art both springs from us all, and belongs to us all.

María Gamundí is one of those rare people, an artist who uses her emotions to perceive truth, unveil it for us, and then craft that with great skill into her sculptures.

Three main roots to her work are clear. The first is European, A classicism of astonishing clarity and simplicity. This comes from the Mallorcan blood of her father. Gamundí is a name like Miró, like Dalí and Gaudí, from Cataluña.

The second is South American, and consequently Oriental, for the Indians of America trace their distant past in THE East. Maria's mother's family are partly native Venezuelans.

The third is the most profound of the three, a root which is universal and timeless: the female. No one of us can ever be indifferent to the human body - particularly to the female body. In using it so poignantly to search for ideal relationships, Maria touches profoundly upon our own births, and our creative energy. Her languid, fecund, maternal women appeal "to that in us which is a gift..." and speak "to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives".

María Gamundí doesn't feel any need to be part of a group-idea, of a movement, or of a moment. In its search for perfection, and in its calm humanity, her work springs not from other people or other work, nor even from any given moment in time. It springs from the thoughtful, caring observation and stimulus of nature....

Richard Fremantle