There is a particular problem with sculpture in a designed interior. A painting agrees to stay on the wall. A sculpture occupies the room, competes with the furniture, and has to be walked around. Most of the time it loses that argument.
Marta Moreu's bronzes win it, and the reason is that almost all of them are caught in mid-air.
Barcelona, 1961
Moreu was born in Barcelona and studied at the city's Faculty of Fine Arts. She came to bronze late and by accident — she found casting in Madrid in 1994, more than a decade after leaving art school, and has worked in metal since. She keeps studios in Barcelona, Esplugues de Llobregat and Begur, on the Costa Brava.
She is represented by Galeria Jordi Barnadas in Barcelona and Galerie Arcturus in Paris, and shows at Espai Cavallers in Lleida. Her work has been exhibited at St'Art Strasbourg, Art Chicago, Art Palm Beach, the India Art Fair and the Singapore Art Fair.
Two series
The works we hold fall into two groups, and they solve different problems.
Bajo el Agua — Underwater. Three bronzes of figures suspended below the surface, at 8, 20 and 51 centimetres. They are horizontal rather than upright, which is unusual for a figure and useful in a room: they sit on a ledge, a plinth or a shelf without demanding a pedestal of their own. The smallest is the size of a hand.
What they are actually about is weightlessness — the specific suspension of a body in water, where the usual rules of standing and falling are held in abeyance. That is why they work in spas and beside pools and in rooms that face the sea. Not because the subject matches the setting, but because the sensation does.
Hombre sobre Arco — Man on a Bow. Figures holding balance on a curve, from 70 centimetres up to a near-life-size work at 161 by 137 centimetres. These are upright and they are about tension: the moment before balance is lost, held indefinitely. A rider's problem, a gymnast's problem, an acrobat's problem, rendered in metal.
The large one is the only work in our collection scaled to an arrival court or a double-height lobby rather than to a room.
Why the surface matters
Moreu's bronzes carry the visible marks of their making. The fingerprints are not sanded out. Where a polished bronze reads as an object that arrived finished, hers read as something that was worked — which means they hold light unevenly and change through the day as the light moves across them.
This has a practical consequence for anyone specifying art for a space. A smooth reflective sculpture in a room with a lot of glass becomes a mirror and disappears. A worked surface does not. It keeps its form under changing light, which is why these pieces survive in rooms with big windows and in rooms with none.
Practical notes
The Underwater series runs from $1,750 to $3,780 and the Bow series from $5,600 to $22,000 — a range that makes a single placement and a multi-room scheme equally possible. All are bronze. All ship worldwide with shipping included and insured to full purchase value, in purpose-built crates where the size requires it, with a Certificate of Authenticity.
For designers and architects, works by artists we represent directly carry a 10% trade discount. Full dimensions, high-resolution images and mock-ups in situ are available on request.
Enquiries: studio@artsbouquet.com