SOUL OF WOOD AND METAL María Sánchez Agustino 10.07 - 14.08.2025

SOUL OF WOOD AND METAL is the second solo exhibition by María Sánchez Agustino (Jaén, 1971) at the Lucía Dueñas Gallery. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville, specializing in sculpture, and has continued her training by taking various specialized courses in the fields of glass, bronze, and sculpture.

He has participated in numerous prestigious national and international art exhibitions and fairs in countries such as Portugal, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, the United States, and China. He has also received several awards and distinctions in various national competitions. He also has public works.

"One of the characteristics of sculptor María Sánchez is that she works with various techniques. She simultaneously sculpts or carves, removing what's unnecessary, or models with her hands, shaping malleable clay to finally cast the piece in bronze. At the same time, she's inspired by drawing and lets her hand flow over the paper.

María Sánchez approaches the female body through human anatomy. However, there is something that fascinates us. She removes part of that body—a shoulder and arm, for example—which is hidden behind a particular point of view. She removes what is not seen because it is behind the preferred observer. However, we do not have the sensation of being before a mutilated body. On the contrary, the piece functions as if the viewer were invited to complete it. The same thing happens when the artist excavates a hip or elongates a pointy, perky buttock into an exaggerated peak. Until now, the contemporary custom of working with emptiness, as in the case of Henry Moore , one of its pioneers, preserved the reference contours and excavated interior voids. María Sánchez has discovered the opposite path, starting from missing voids to arrive at a stylized whole.

JA Samaniego

ALMA DE MADERA Y METAL (WOOD AND METAL SOUL) brings together works born from the soul to convey or evoke emotions through a play on materials and forms that speak to us about life, expressing movement and beauty through their unique interpretation of the human body. On the other hand, works that, from a more conceptual perspective, play with the same materials—wood and metal—to represent the most frequently repeated words the artist received in text messages during the pandemic. They belong to the Conectados project, a tribute to those windows and balconies that became vehicles of expression, connection, and communication.