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Delicate Balance Installation
Sebastian Spreng (born April 6, 1956) is an Argentinian-American visual artist.
Biography
Born in Esperanza, Santa Fe (Argentina) of German descendants, is a self-taught artist (painter, illustrator, stage designer) and Music critic, related from his mother side
to writer Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer
(1935-2002), also a native of Esperanza, the first formally
organized of the Agricultural colonies in
Argentina, formed by 200 families of immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, France and Luxembourg who arrived in 1856. [1]
He spent his childhood in Esperanza and in the Argentinian
countryside (the Pampas) then in
the Atlantic Coast in Mar del Plata moving to Buenos Aires in 1973.
At age 17 his works were exhibited in Buenos Aires in a group
exhibit Artists from Esperanza at the Fundación
Lowe. The next year he had his first solo exhibit at
Martina Cespedes Gallery in the San Telmo district of the Argentinean
capital. The show was sold out on opening night and the gallery
held his work exclusively for the next seven years.
In 1978 he was the stage-designer for the argentinian theater
production of Jean
Cocteau's L'aigle à deux
têtes (The Eagle Has Two Heads) starring Miguel Angel Sola and worked also as
illustrator.
During the 1980s, he settled in Miami (Florida) - where he still lives and works - and
has been a vital presence in the Florida art scene ever since. Since moving to
Florida he had solo and group exhibitions in Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, Toronto, Caracas, Düsseldorf, Essen, Munich, Osaka, Tokyo,
Panama, Italy, Buenos Aires, Sarasota, Key West and Miami.
His works were included in the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum
in the Paradise Lost exhibition, in the
Miami-Dade
Public Library System and in the show Latin-American
Artists from Florida in the Palazzo Mediceo (Medici), Seravezza, Tuscany, Italy in 2002.
His awards include the Hortt Competition at the Museum of Art Fort
Lauderdale and the 1995 Personal Achievement Award
from the Muscular Dystrophy
Association for the State of Florida.
As noted, Spreng is a MD patient.
In 1994, he was commissioned by Metro-Dade Art In Public
Places to create a permanent exhibition at the Miami-Dade Government Center. The series
Nonet for the Long Journey, is a memorial tribute to the
American with Disabilities Trailblazers. In 1998 (and
2004), Christie's New York auctioned his works
among other Latin American Masters and his name was included in the
book "Leonard’s Price Index Latin American Art at Auction" by Susan
Theran [2]
In 2009 his work Daphne was
selected for the book "Speak for the Trees" along 70 other artists
including David
Hockney, Christo, April Gornik, Yoko Ono, Julie Heffernan, Robert Longo, Mark Ryden, the Starn
Brothers, etc.[1]
Music is usually present in his work and whole series were based
on musical structures titled: Liederkreis Opus I and II, Ring
Landscapes on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen,
Sinfonietta,Impromptus, Chamber Music and
Reverberations. As a result, many were chosen as cover
illustrations for the Florida Philharmonic
Orchestra Playbills, along with the New World Symphony 1995-96 Season
Program Book, the Florida Grand Opera 1998-99
Season Program and Poster and as CD covers in recordings of,
among others, composer Henryk Gorecki, Ildebrando
Pizzetti [4] and the Grammy Award Da
Pacem with works by Arvo Pärt [3]
Since 1988 Spreng writes about Classical music for magazines and
newspapers. His career writing about music began as foreign
correspondent for Clásica Magazine, Argentina. In the last
twenty years as music journalist he interviewed, among others
personalities in that field, composer Luciano Berio, conductors Donald
Runnicles, Nicholas McGegan, James Judd and Michael
Tilson Thomas; singers Montserrat
Caballe, Renata
Scotto, Thomas Hampson, Barbara
Hendricks, Evelyn
Lear, Thomas Stewart
(bass-baritone), Anne Sofie von Otter and Deborah Voigt; pianist Evgeny Kissin; violinists Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Pinchas
Zukerman.[7]
Critic
Assestments
Lilia Fontana, art critic and director of the Miami Dade
College Kendall Campus Art Gallery wrote in the catalog to his
exhibition in Coral Gables, 2002:
He is a minimalist at heart, but he combines the feeling of
isolation from an Edward Hopper painting with the Color Field technique
of a Mark Rothko.
The result is a mixture of components creating an original Spreng.
He has formed a bridge between the psychological and the physical.
In his previous work he partnered a solitary figure within a vast
seascape. A single swimmer floating alone in the water, created a
sense of isolation, whereas the autonomous swimmer had no boundaries,
possibly a romanticized longing by the artist to set his own body
free. This figure, though small in its surroundings, seemed to have
had domain of its environment – able to float away on a whim devoid
of any imparities. Within his newer work, the swimmer is
transferred into an arbor, and it is juxtaposed within a panoramic
landscape somewhat agoraphobic. Much of the landscapes are inspired
from Las Pampas in Argentina,
but its aesthetics is exclusively American with European roots. The
work references the Romantic landscape. Each piece has a
painted line around the composition, creating a self-contained
frame within a frame. Spreng creates for the viewer the illusion of
looking through a window and witnessing his phantasmic world. They
are simple arrangements, where trees become biomorphic forms
enclosed in a Rothkoesque background. Layer upon layer of textured
passages richly create his surface. His compositions generate
stillness and a delicate balance of forms accentuating a harmonious
interaction. Spreng’s personal aesthetic and individual style
is unmistakable. He has recontextualized Las Pampas into an oniric
American formation.[4]
Dr. Carol Damian, director of the Frost Art Museum at the Florida International
University, Miami wrote:
Sebastian Spreng’s paintings demonstrate the essence of
simplicity, visual abstractions of form and color; however, upon
close examination it is quite evident that technically they are
anything but simple. As Sebastian Spreng searches for the means to
create haunting accolades to the memory of time and place, his
paintings have become more luminous. On the brink of total
abstraction, they are saturated with a pervasive ambience that
glows with mystery. They allow the viewer moments of introspection
and a glimpse into the past.[5]
Art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa wrote in 1991:
Among the many artists who live in south Florida few have
contemplated its environment with passion and freshness of
Sebastian Spreng, a painter born in Buenos Aires in 1956. Spreng
came to Miami with an impressive list of triumphs but it was not
until he reached Florida that he found the central theme of his
work: man’s presence between the faces of the planet-land and
sea.... Spreng articulates the paradox of human
Being-although man alone is agent and consciousness, he is but one
of life’s beings. All landscape seeks its destiny in reflection,
seeks to become the indispensable verb in an idea or an attitude
towards life. In the paintings of Spreng the chimera of landfall
which we call Florida has accomplished a part of his
destiny[6]
Selected
bibliography
- Alvarez Bravo, Armando. “Los viajes del sueño”, El Nuevo
Herald, Miami, 5/25/03
- Alvarez Bravo, Armando. "Las reverberaciones de Sebastian
Spreng", El Nuevo Herald, Miami, 12/19/99
- Alvarez Bravo, Armando. "Los necesarios oasis", El Nuevo
Herald, Miami, 16/11/97
- Alvarez Bravo, Armando. Figura del momento/El Nuevo Herald,
Miami, 24/9/98
- Alvarez Bravo, Armando."Spreng y los paisajes de la
imaginacion", El Nuevo Herald, 28/10/92
- Alzola, Concha. "Nueva idea del paisaje", Vanidades USA
Magazine, Miami, March 1993
- Arcidiacono, Carlos."Plastica: Sebastian Spreng", Revista
Mercado, B. Aires, September 1975
- Arocemena, Farfan. "Sebastian Spreng", Revista Creer, Buenos
Aires, 1978
- Aubele, Luis."Los Pueblos Blancos del joven Spreng",La Opinion (Argentina), Buenos Aires,
22/9/76
- Baliari, Eduardo. "Sebastian Spreng", El Economista, Buenos
Aires, November 1978
- Baron Supervielle, Odile."La Pintura Luminosa de Spreng", La
Nacion, Buenos Aires, 30/1/94
- Batet, Janet. "Sebastian Spreng: Horizontes develados", El
Nuevo Herald, Miami, 5/17/2009
- Batet, Janet. "Sebastian Spreng", Artnexus Magazine, December
2009
- Bazzano-Nelson, Florencia. “Sebastian Spreng at Anthony
Ardavin, Atlanta”.ARTNEXUS, 2001
- Bean, Shawn. “”36 Artists to buy now: Sebastian Spreng”,
Florida International Magazine, Miami, October 2004
- Behar, Thelia."Artist turns Nature into musical studies",
Buenos Aires Herald, 16/11/86
- Behar, Thelia. "The Supernatural", Buenos
Aires Herald, 25/10/77
- Behar, Thelia. "Reaping a plentiful harvest", Buenos Aires
Herald, 11/5/82
- Brasco, Miguel. "Algo sobre Sebastian Spreng", Revista Diners,
Buenos Aires, May 1975
- Briante, Miguel."En el nombre del nadador",Pagina 12, Buenos Aires,
27/11/89
- Cantor, Judy. "Floating skies and impossibly blue seas", Buenos
Aires Herald, October 1987
- Cantor, Judy. “Natural beauties”. Miami New Times, Miami, 5/22/03
- Capalbo, Daniel. "El Paisaje Metafisico", Paula Magazine,
Buenos Aires, September 1988
- Castelar, Diana. "Un joven artista que trasciende", Clarin, Buenos Aires, 6/12/87
- Cernadas Quesada, Alfredo. "Unbounded Creativity", Buenos Aires
Herald, 29/10/95
- Cernadas Quesada, Alfredo. "The Silent Voyager", Buenos Aires
Herald, 3/12/89
- Damian, Carol.”Sebastian Spreng”(Liederkreis), ARTNEXUS Nº66,
9/2007
- Damian, Carol.”Sebastian Spreng at The Americas Collection”,
ARTNEXUS Nº50, 2003
- Damian, Carol. "Beyond the blue paintings of Sebastian Spreng",
Six Continents Mag, Miami 2001
- Damian, Carol. Sebastian Spreng en Arteconsult , ArtNexus
Magazine Nº22,US, October 1996
- Damian, Carol. "Studies of Nature", The Americas Collection
March 1995, Exhibit Catalog.[5]
- Damian, Carol. "Reverberations". The Americas Collection
November 1999, Exhibit Catalog.
- Dieguez Videla, Albino. "Spreng Ganador", La Prensa (Buenos Aires),
October 1995
- Dieguez Videla, Albino. "Spreng: Veranos", La Prensa, Buenos
Aires, 2/11/86
- Dieguez Videla, Albino."La rapida maduracion de Spreng", La
Prensa, Buenos Aires, 6/12/87
- Di Tella, Andres."Spreng imagina lugares que le complaceria
vivir",Tiempo Argentino, B.A.,5/94
- Enriquez, Lucia.”Wagner’s Ring infuses artist’s Landscapes, The
Seattle Times, 8/26/05
- Feinsilber, Jorge. "Spreng, sus mares y cielos", Ambito
Financiero, Buenos Aires, 19/11/86
- Feinsilber, Laura. ‘Miami exhibe la diversidad del paisaje
latinoamericano”, Ambito Financiero, Buenos Aires, 6/3/03
- Feinsilber, Laura. "La depurada tecnica de Spreng", Ambito
Financiero, Buenos Aires, 16/12/87
- Feinstein, Ronnie.”Miami heats-up”, Art in America, November 1999
- Fontana, Lilia. “Spreng: La fuerza de los sueños”. Arte al dia.
Julio 2003
- Fontana, Lilia. Preface to Exhibition The Americas Collection,
2002 [4]
- Galli, Aldo. "Subjetiva concepcion del paisaje", La Nacion,
Buenos Aires, 8/11/86
- Galli, Aldo. "Idealismo y realidad", La Nacion, Buenos Aires,
12/12/87
- Graham Yool, Micaela. "Argentine Art comes home", Buenos Aires
Herald, August 1975
- Gudiño Kieffer, Eduardo. Martina Cespedes 1977 Buenos Aires,
Exhibition Catalog
- Gudiño Kieffer, Eduardo."La Magia del Agua", Revista
Hippopotamus, Buenos Aires, 9/90
- Heer de Beaugé, Isabel - Sebastian Spreng, Esperanza y su gente
- Esperanza, Santa Fe, 1980.
- Hernandez, Jesus. “Dialogo inminente”. Diario de las Americas,
Miami, 5/16/03
- Herrera, Adriana. "Arteaméricas nuevos logros y retos". El
Nuevo Herald, Miami, 3/23/08
- Herrera, Adriana. "Latin American Art Auction: La subasta
esencial de Miami", Nuevo Herald Miami, 10/28/07
- Herrera, Adriana. “Ring Landscapes: la consagracion de
Sebastian Spreng. Nuevo Herald Miami 7/8/5
- Hurlburt, Roger."Bigger bolder Hortt", The Sun Sentinel, Fort
Lauderdale, Florida 16/9/90
- Jemanok, Steve. “Boston:Yankee ambition”.Art &
Antiques Magazine. June 2004
- Juncadella, Soledad “Sebastian Spreng: Liederkreis”.Complot
Magazine, Issue 61, Miami, May/07
- Kohen, Helen."Landscape:healthy genre, handsome show", Miami
Herald, 10/11/90
- Kowalski, Maria. "Sebastian Spreng", ShowBiz Magazine, Miami,
December 1995
- Locke, Donald. "Dreamscapes". Atlanta Magazine. Atlanta.
Georgia , 23/9/95
- Luis, Carlos M. “Representaciones de una experiencia
espiritual”.Nuevo Herald Miami 5/13/07
- Magrini, Cesar. "Juventud tesoro multiple", El Cronista
Comercial, Buenos Aires, 21/9/76
- Magrini, Cesar." Largo y continuado viaje", El Cronista
Comercial, Buenos Aires, 18/9/80
- Magrini, Cesar."Pintura que es ejercicio de gran amor", El
Cronista Comercial, B.Aires , 3/12/87
- Manzano, Manuel. "El paraiso acuatico", El Nacional (Caracas) , Venezuela,
11/11/94
- McQuaid, Kate. “Tree-lined formula”, The Boston
Globe, Boston, 8/22/03
- Meadows, Gail. “Artist exhibit takes on a golden tint”. Miami
Herald, 5/24/03
- Montane, Diana. "Spreng: feliz en sus lienzos", Exito, Miami ,
21/10/92
- Morsella, Astur. "Spreng: los colores de la paz", Selecta
Magazine, Miami, November 1992
- Mosella, Astur."Buscador del absoluto", Diario de las Americas,
Miami, 25/10/92
- Morsella, Astur. "Spreng: arte que libera", Miami Mensual
Magazine, November 1989
- Novo, Mireya. "Sueños de un mar azul turquesa", Exito, Miami,
Florida, 22/3/95
- Pau Llosa, Ricardo. "Bien merecido el exito del arte hispano",
Exito, Miami, December 1991
- Pau Llosa, Ricardo. "Sebastian Spreng", ArtPapers, Atlanta,
Georgia, December 1991 [6]
- Pau Llosa, Ricardo. "Sebastian Spreng", Revista Imagen,
Caracas, Venezuela, March 1992
- Pau Llosa, Ricardo. Centro Euroamericano Caracas 1994,
Exhibition Catalog
- Ponsowy, Mori. "El Silencio de Spreng", El Nacional, Caracas,
Venezuela. 29/11/94
- Santiago, Fabiola. ”DC exhibit celebrates Miami”. Miami Herald,
February 24, 2008
- Scott, Mercedes. "Spreng; Imagenes del alma", Revista
MarieClaire USA, November 1992
- Segal, Horacio. "En Busca Del Paraiso Perdido", El Nuevo
Herald, Miami, 1/10/92
- Silva, Patricia. "Swimming in Landscapes", Latin Finance
Magazine, Florida, September 1993
- Tischler, Gary.”Redefining Boundaries”. The
Washington Diplomat, DC. April 2008
- Theran, Susan. "Leonard’s Price Index Latin American Art at
Auction", Page 105/443, 1999, Newton Mass.
- Tomb, Geoffrey. "Art celebrates passage to independence", Miami
Herald, 14/7/95
- Turner, Elisa. “CRITIC'S PICK | Sebastian Spreng: Recent
Works”, Miami Herald, May 4, 2007
- Turner, Elisa. “Sebastian Spreng: Recent Works”, Arte al dia
internacional, June 200*Turner, Elisa. "Spreng Celebrates the
Richness of Ocean", Miami Herald, 15/10/89
- Turner, Elisa. "Writing and Painting about Chamber Music",
Miami Herald, 27/3/95
- Turner, Elisa. "Striking Miniatures in Spreng Exhibition",
Miami Herald, 14/10/92
- Turner, Elisa. "Landscapes evokes places of the mind", Miami
Herald, 3/6/92
- Ycaza, Cindy. "Paintings Reflect Fascination with Sea", Miami
Herald, 18/8/91
- --- People Magazine – Triunfadores:El color de
la genialidad -page 66-April 2000
- --- CHRISTIE’S Catalog , The Latin American Sale, page 148, New
York, November 1998
- ---"Mirada transparente", Revista Life & Fitness, Buenos
Aires, 12/31/89
- ---"Reencuentro en plena libertad", Revista La Nacion, Buenos
Aires, 11/28/89
- ---"Cuando la pintura es libertad", La Razon, Buenos Aires,
12/6/87
- ---"Un llamado inequivoco, fuerte e inconfundible", Revista
Cronista Comercial, Buenos Aires, 12/87
- ---"De Miami sin escalas", Revista Noticias, Buenos Aires,
12/3/89
- ---“Pintura de soledades, lirismo de la luz”, Revista Caras,
Buenos Aires, 5/9/2006
- ---"Speak for the Trees", Marquand Books, Seattle 2009 ISBN
978-0-615-31547-8
References
- Esperanza History
Site
- Susan Theran Index
- Arvo Pärt Da Pacem
- [2]
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