Pablo Atchugarry (Montevideo, 1954) is one of the artists handled by Apart Art Advisory. A Uruguayan sculptor known for his abstract marble forms, he lives and works between Lecco, Italy, and Manantiales, Uruguay.
His father Pedro, who had trained with the Constructivist Joaquín Torres-García, encouraged him to paint from childhood. In 1972, aged eighteen, he held his first solo exhibition of paintings in Montevideo; after experimenting with cement, iron and wood, he left for Europe in 1977.
In 1979 he carved his first work in Carrara marble, La Lumière. In 1982 he settled in Lecco, where he created La Pietà from a single twelve-ton block; his first solo sculpture exhibition followed in 1987, in Bramantino’s Crypt in Milan, curated by Raffaele De Grada.
He selects each block himself and carves it personally: white Carrara marble, grey Bardiglio, black marble from Belgium and pink marble from Portugal, as well as bronze. Sinuous curves, folds and oval openings, almost always rising vertically, evoke plants, waves and the human figure, balanced between figuration and abstraction.
In 1999 he opened the Museo Pablo Atchugarry in Lecco, in 2002 he received the Michelangelo Award in Carrara and in 2003 he represented Uruguay at the 50th Venice Biennale. In 2007 he founded the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry in Manantiales, with an international park of monumental sculpture; in 2013 Mondadori Electa published the catalogue raisonné of his sculptures, edited by Carlo Pirovano.
