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Artist Statement:
Throughout his career, Spreng
never strayed far from
nature’s beauty. An ongoing
theme, which he, consciously
or not, goes back to from time
to time, centers around
tropical landscapes, azure
seas, and expansive skies
surrounding a solitary figure
- a tree, an island, a
swimmer; free, yet enveloped
by nature, alone, yet
connected with one and all.
One could confidently venture
to surmise that the swimmer is
Sebastian Spreng in
self-portrait. His maturation
both as artist and human being
on a quest for self-discovery
lead him deeper and deeper
into an exploration of the
psyche through texture, color
and form. Spreng applies
strong, mysterious, mood
altering colors to finely
prepared surfaces, resulting
in a mystical experience of
abstracting reality yet
capturing the very heart of
what is most real within us.
After a successful career in
his country, the Argentinean
born artist moved to Miami
Beach in 1987 and he has been
a strong presence in the
Florida art scene ever since.
Spreng’s works have been seen
in solo and group exhibitions
across the United States as
well as in Germany, Japan,
Central and South America.
In 1994, METRO-DADE ART IN
PUBLIC PLACES commissioned him
a ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
2008-Arteamericas, Miami
Beach, Fl
2007-LIEDERKREIS, Americas
Collection, C.Gables, Fl
2007-Art Miami, Miami, Fl
2006 -Arteamericas, Miami
Beach, Fl
2006-Arden Gallery, Boston Ma.
2005-Toronto International
Artfair, Toronto, Ca
2005-RING LANDSCAPES,Friesen
Gallery/Seattle Wa
2004-Arteamericas, Coconut
Grove, Fl
2004-CHAMBER MUSIC OPUS 3, ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
THE AMERICAS COLLECTION
www.americascollection.com
ARDEN GALLERY BOSTON
www.ardengallery.com
TIMOTHY TEW GALLERIES ATLANTA
www.tewgalleries.com
FRIESEN GALLERY SEATTLE/SUN
VALLEY, IDAHO
www.friesengallery.com
ARTECONSULT,Panama
...
Further Information
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Collections:
American Airlines, Admiral
Club, Miami International
Airport
Art in Public Places,
Government Center, Miami,
Florida
BAC International, Miami,
Florida
Banco del Itsmo, Panama City,
Panama
Banco Santander, Miami,
Florida
Barclays Bank, Miami, Florida
Burgermeisterhaus,
Essen-Werden, Germany
Essen Sparkasse Sammlung,
Essen, Germany
Federal Reserve, Atlanta,
Georgia
Florida Grand Opera, Miami...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Reviews for Sebastian Spreng:
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ART NEXUS MAGAZINE
REVIEWS
Sebastian Spreng - Anthony Ardavin Gallery, Atlanta
The protagonist of Witness, Sebastian Spreng's exhibition in Atlanta, is the tree. Firmly anchored on a horizon that breathes between two infinite and solitary planes, these lonely trees, distilled to their bare minimum, are witnesses to the passage of time. In Spreng's intensely romantic landscapes, the world can change from a moment of impending darkness announced by agonizing reds to an instant of yellow light resonating with conviction over a field of ominous greens. Sometimes the tree turns into a thick, dark forest blocking the horizon with only a brief interruption to let the weak light of a moon or a sun pass through. Many of Spreng's compatriots identify the expansiveness of his minimal landscapes with that of the pampas where the artist grew up. However, the fact is that since his childhood, he has been creating imaginary landscapes or, as he calls them, interior or parallel landscapes which have the power to evoke multiple identifications.
Born in 1956, Spreng grew up in Santa Fe, Argentina, and taught himself to be an artist when his mobility was impaired by the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis. By the end of the 1960s, after many years of solitary work, he dominated, among others, the secrets of rendering perspective and architectural details, important aspects of his paintings during those years. Spreng's first exhibition in 1975, entitled Pueblos blancos, consisted of imaginary depictions of Mediterranean-like villages, full of convincing details but emptyof inhabitants.
Around 1983 Spreng went to Florida and decided to stay. The physical freedom he experienced when swimming in the warm Florida waters soon had an impact on his paintings. He became one of the few Latin American artists to make the beaches and the sea of Florida his main subject as swimmers began to appear in his paintings. These small figures, seen from the back and dwarfed by the enormity of the landscape, move in complete solitude through the still waters of rivers, ponds, and especially the sea.
There is a musical quality to Spreng's work that finds its most evident expression in his landscapes from the 1990s, which he produced in series organized like pieces of chamber music. For him, "the act of painting has been like a chase after that special, unique color, the one that sounds right in the right moment, trying to catch it like in an obsessive and passionate game." Spreng uses color as a musical tonality that makes his images reverberate with a given mood. Thus, his miniature-like paintings of solitary gardens and his images of never-ending seas cradling a lonely swimmer can appeard brooding or infused with light and hope.
Spreng gradually replaced the swimmers by the tree as a symbol for the self immersed in the vastness of nature. The extreme visual condensation and the reduction in size of his recent paintings have intensified their paradoxical qualities rather than neutralize them. At first sight, the expansiveness of the landscape and the resplendent quality of the color seem to go beyond the black boundaries that Spreng paints around his canvases (always to be presented without frames). However, this surrounding darkness also pushes back into the images and renders their luminosity fragile and precarious. For instance, in The Orchard, a lonely tree sits on an empty horizon that hovers over a dark field accented with bright red flowers. The image, in constant struggle with the encroaching dark edges, suggests the fragility of an old photograph that time is evaporating.
Spreng plays with double or even multiple readings that allow for the coexistence in each painting of parallel landscapes. They are at once full of life and marked by doom, peaceful and tense with impending action, full of music and immersed in silence. Even the surface of his works are equivocal, since they appear rough but are sleek to the touch.
Spreng believes that the complexity of his images come from trying to depict an interior landscape rather than an exterior one. Perhaps their appeal also lies in the extreme simplification of his motifs which have become archetypes resonating with meaning.
Florencia Bazzano-Nelson
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