María Belén Morales

(Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1928-2016)

Gran semilla

1978

aluminium and galvanised steel

267 x 230 x 17 cm

Inv. no. 2288

BBVA Collection Spain



The artist was a founding member of Nuestro Arte, an artists’ group that searched for new paths for expression, breaking away from the Indigenismo and other clichés that were so well established in the island of Tenerife at the time, opting instead for a free-thinking art with no censorship and removed from the prevailing tradition.

Morales’ initial tenet is that form is the factor that adds wealth to matter and not the other way round. In consonance, she combines conventional material—like wood or bronze—with other industrial materials to express a world of her own. In her works, the strength does not come from the matter but from the concept she strives to materialise.

None of the elements in María Belén Morales’ work have been left to chance. Everything is the result of a thoroughly thought-out creative process and of a quest for a faultless finish. Morales exerts total control over the time spent in each one of her pieces, engaging deeply in each one of the steps of creation, in which the sculptor and the matter dialogue with each other as the abstract element of the tangible reality is materialised.

This work is powerful, not only in terms of its size, but also in the contrasting colours it achieves through the use of steel and aluminium. The composition is harmonic, containing a kind of seed that stands out from the flat plane of the support, opening up and generating space; as such it is like an opening of the material from within, conferring a contrast of light and shadow towards the exterior and revealing the hidden core.