Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz, born in Madrid in 1952, died at the age of only 49 in 2001 due to a cardiac aneurysm that struck him at his home in Ibiza. Spanish, yes, but with an Anglo-Saxon influence, he was divided between London and New York, where he studied and developed his expressive character. Initially drawn to architecture, he later chose the path of an artist, producing an intensely regarded body of work considered among the most interesting in the contemporary art scene. Muñoz became famous for his standing sculptures, carved in wood or cast in bronze or resin—“little figures” that gaze at themselves in mirrors, embrace, crowd room corners, or impassively play musical instruments. His figures evoke a constant sense of instability and fragility of the soul, always on the border between illusion and reality, which, as the artist once said, is “an absolute enigma we call space.” His characters live in relation to empty space, on which they depend for their very existence.

“Some of the best figurative sculptures seem aware of the impossibility of appearing alive and conscious of their limits. Among the most successful sculptures are those that express these limits—the limit of being simply a sculpture or of being a man walking down the street. For much longer than a moment, you could confuse one with the other," declared the artist in one of his final interviews.

The Iannaccone Collection includes a sculpture created by Muñoz in 1999, made of resin and crafted in intricate detail, so much so that one is tempted to touch it. The folds of the athlete's uniform are rendered with such care that the figure appears caught in the middle of a game of Pelota, a popular sport of Basque origin that dates back to the 13th century. While the rules of the game allow the use of a wooden bat or racket, Muñoz’s work focuses on the power of the hands and arms as they hurl an invisible ball, capturing the athlete in a moment of intense exertion, fully immersed in the action.

This is a solitary athlete engaged in a team sport, missing the support of the team—a man trapped in a game with no future move available to him.