José Villa is the Cuban sculptor of highest international relevance (…). Born in Santiago de Cuba (1950), graduated and post graduate from the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, he decided to distance himself from the training that obeyed the proposals of realism to dare with abstractionism that proposed volume and other shapes distant from his learning.
Besides exhibiting his vast work in museums and galleries, Villa has devoted part of his efforts to place his art in public spaces. He usually works with lasting material, namely stone, bronze, in different formats: medium, large scale and the most recent proposal of sculptural jewelry.
We discover in the artist the dichotomy of he, who, together with medium size and monumental work, develops transcendent abstract pieces, volumes of splendid formal perfection and sophisticated imagery. Expressions of his modernity and good taste are found in Mutantia, created in the year 2010 in the Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba, a piece where the author underlines his unalterable devotion to abstractionism, revealing his concern for visual structures by creating geometric figures (…). In this process, the concept of the spiral enables him to journey through a dynamic that aims to go beyond the static spirit.
The spiral is a symbol of growth and evolution: it represents the process s of returning once and again to the same point, but always at a different and superior level, so that every step is conceived in a new light. With this notion of the shape, we can conclude that this new proposal is a metaphor of his excellent artistic career. We are facing the creative spiral of his work that leads him from gallery sculpture to monumental and environmental sculpture, to return to the small format with metalsmith work that does not renounce its sculptural nature, animated by the concept of geometric abstracion and full of a captivating beauty.
In his most recent production, Villa surprises with jewelry (10 editions each) designed by the artist and invariably marked by the imprint of his personal style. Refinement, balance and some mystery are the result of this minimalist exercise (…).
This is the same artist who took down from pedestals the eminent figures of the commemorative arts, to transform the concept of monument; the same artist that has provided Cuban geography and other sites of the planet with environmental works. The José Villa of always, demonstrating his mastery in the most intimate of scales with sculptural jewelry, as a tiny version of beauty, the marvelous spiral of his creation.
