Retrato Civil. (Civil portrait) Sculpture

Manuel Llaca Osorio is a Spanish-Mexican sculptor and draftsman who has individually and collectively exhibited his works in Mexico, Spain and France. He was born in Mexico City in 1963 and currently lives in Madrid since 2004. He studied Industrial Design, worked in this field for many years and taught Design courses and workshops at different Universities in Guadalajara, Mexico. During this stage he became involved with the plastic arts in a natural and self-taught way, later taking various courses, subjects and workshops. In 1998 he held his first collective exhibition at the Cabañas Institute in this city. In 2003 he moved to the City of Zaragoza, Spain. He studies "Arts applied to Sculpture" at the Zaragoza School of Art and in 2004 he settled in Madrid where he continued his training in "Sculptural Techniques" at the La Palma Art School. In July 2004 he has his first solo exhibition "Petits espaces illimités" in Argentan, France. In 2005 he started working as a design draftsman in different companies until 2020. In this long period of time he set up with other friends the artistic workshop “Plataforma34” where he continued to practice sculpture. He currently took a radical turn to dedicate himself exclusively to the plastic arts. About The Work In his work, the main theme is usually the portrait and the space. His ideas are developed from the emotions and experiences caused by the events around him. The pieces can be planned, improvised or a mixture of both. Influenced by his work experience in design and delineation, by great artists such as Eduardo Chillida, Jorge de Oteiza, Mexican sculptural Geometrism and many others, his works tend towards a minimalist geometric point with a small expressionist dose granted by his devotion to silent movies. He looks for in each work the spatial relationship between matter and emptiness, light and shadow, depth and top. The materials with which he works are varied, but he feels a great attraction for alabaster, plaster and metals.