The internationally renowned artist, Pablo Mac Clure, is a professional architect from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, place where he developed an interest for abstraction. His passion for drawing was developed during his early childhood and he distinguished himself for his skill with pencils, inks and colors.
During his stay in Europe, Spain’s National Heritage commissioned him a series of drawings of the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial in 1984, to commemorate its 400th anniversary, pieces that were distributed in all Spanish patrimonial monuments.
Mac Clure stayed in Madrid for over a decade, which gave him the opportunity to meet the most celebrated artists of the 80s, including Manuel Viola, with whom he worked in his studio and who allowed him to learn more about the trends of the moment.
He also got to meet the Chilean surrealist artist, Roberto Matta, with whom he maintained an inspiring correspondence: “I insist, with surprise, that your painting praises the sky and not even the ground can hold you back…” (1984).
When he returned to Chile in 1990, he held several exhibitions in Chile (Museo de Bellas Artes, Isabel Aninat Gallery, Ana María Matthei, Trece Gallery, among others) and a number in countries around Europe, Latin America, Asia and the United States.
In 1994, he produced a remarkable piece, Constelación II, a polyptych (oil on canvas) that is permanently exhibited at the Los Héroes subway station, along with an art intervention where he placed a wall-length mirror that reflects the piece, broadening the space and playing with color and abstraction, which constitute the central themes of his work.
According to gallery owner Isabel Aninat, the piece by Mac Clure demonstrates: “The technique and the tidiness of someone who knows their craft, masters the space, and whose spots distributed in a perfect coordination gives each one a cosmic order, much like someone with much knowledge on the alchemy of colors would do.”
His last exhibitions were carried out successfully in New York in 2013 at the Lion Heart Gallery, in Pound Ridge; in 2015 at the Cervantes Institute in Manhattan and in California in Gualala Art, where he received compliments from expert critics.
Poet Raúl Zurita wrote: “From all Chilean artists, Pablo Mac Clure’s work is one of the most solids of Chilean painting. Among many other aspects, his work is proposed as a sort of double movement, coming and going simultaneously, where opposing elements don’t cancel each other out, but are mutually illuminated instead.” (2009)
For the exhibition Equilibrium, to be inaugurated on May 25th at Espacio de Arte Ojo Rojo, the artist has prepared over ten oil paintings on large canvases and digitally engraved oil paintings. The sample showcases the artist’s great refinement and prompts a reflection on the spatial and temporal meaning of each and every one of his pieces, aiming to find harmony, consonance and balance.
Comentarios
