Harry Abend
Bio
Harry Abend (Poland, 1937) arrived in Venezuela in 1948. He has a degree in Architecture (Central University of Venezuela) and is a self-taught sculptor. His first solo exhibition was presented at the Museum of Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1962. In 1963 obtains the National Sculpture Award at the XXIV Annual Official Venezuelan Art Salon. In 1964 he participated in the Sculpture Workshop dictated in Caracas by Kenneth Armitage. Over the sixties, he develops his work as a goldsmith and made his first works integrated into the architecture. In 1990 wins the 1st Prize of the Sculpture Salon “50 years of the Central Bank of Venezuela”. In 2009 he was the honored artist by the Ibero-American Fair of Art of Caracas. He has participated in more than 100 group exhibitions and 47 individual shows, the most recent in La Cuadra (2006), Templars (2009), Faría + Fábregas (2011), and Kern Museum (2012), and GBG ARTS (2014). He currently lives and works in Caracas, Venezuela.
Statement
When looking back at Harry Abend's work, the permanence of various axes of concern can be seen. Some of them come from very underlying and implicit levels, others may be more deliberate and explicit. But when attempting a certain grouping of all of them, we specifically think about four aspects: the consolidation of a pluralist statute, the ratification of the sculptural paradigms, the legitimation of an abstract orientation, and the validation of some conjugated contrasts. Many of his sculptures are inscribed within a peculiar coexistence of the initially polarized: the orthogonal and the ovate, the elaborate and the rustic, the constructive and the sensitive, the whole and the truncated, the architectural and the magical, the concave and the convex, the smooth and the textured, vertical and horizontal, deliberate and accidental, in short, he promotes an aesthetic spectrum of the universal breadth.
