Photos: Carlos A. Schwartz – Efraín Pintos

Homenaje a las Islas Canarias (Homage to the Canary Islands)

Author
Pablo Serrano
Edition
I Exhibition (1973-74)
Year
1973
Further information
On display, García Sanabria Parkl
Material
Concrete

“An important work, in concrete, is that of Pablo Serrano, “Homage to the Canary Islands”. Seven blocks in which light and water intervene, combining the continuous solidary idea of union and roots, always present in his work, of human communication. This light-water work presents a series of fundamental technical interrelationships for the current consideration of the monumental work destined for society.”

“Other works, such as that of Pablo Serrano, accompanied by water and light, with the permanence of its song of hope; (…), can fit into this consideration of channels of communication between the piece of art and people.”

Westerdahl, E. (1973). La 1ª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en la calle, en Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, ISSN 1133-8857, Nº. 99. Número dedicado a los parques naturales, 47-50.

“But also, the most outstanding values of the following generation, with such fundamental names as Pablo Serrano, with the seven lighthouses raised above the Atlantic Ocean in his Homage to the Canary Islands, which, together with the Prophet by his namesake Pablo Gargallo, complete the extraordinary Aragonese contribution to the sculptural art of this century.”

Hernández Perera, J. (1996). Dos décadas de Esculturas en la Calle. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 25-54). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“Those born after 1910 were characteristic creators of the second post-war period, and researchers of new materials (especially concrete). Pablo Serrano’s (b. 1910) Homage to the Canary Islands (1973), who had to change his first intention of making sheets of water slide in order to accentuate the seven island blocks, is part of the volumetric reaction after his successful career in the expressive, both figurative and abstract”

Pérez Reyes, C. (1996). Reflexión sobre lo visto y lo vivido. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 65-76). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“Pablo Serrano’s sculpture Homage to the Canary Islands (1973), with its seven volumes-islands pointing towards the sky, lets water pass through its hollows and crevices. Exchanges of water, matter, and light. But in Pablo Serrano everything reverts to matter, to earthly heaviness. The volumes seem to emerge from the ground like a kind of solid eruption, through cobblestones that seem to be burst by a force coming from the centre of the Earth. Such is the force, the expansion Earth’s fire.

Crystallised, solidified force. It was not Pablo Serrano’s only merit to imagine these Atlantic islands in this way: another value of this piece, even more suggestive, is to suggest that in this way the whole force of the Earth operates, its magmatic interior, resolved in forms that seek the air, the light, the horses of the sun”.

Sánchez Robayna, A. (1996). El espacio de la escultura. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 77-86). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6