WORK

MARU ORIOL uses her creative intuition to translate into an essential language the nature of each material: robust, solid, and strong. These qualities help to express endurance and imperishability in contrast to the fragility of the sculpted matter. The expressive capacities of materials are suggested by their intrinsic nature.

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Maru’s work, examples of which are in the private collections of the Royal Family and Norman Foster, is RESONANT AND SENSITIVE.

MARBLE

This material is her greatest challenge.

‘The folds of marble nestled the solitude I felt.
Marble is the classic material of the sculptor: hard, intense, and eternal. Creating figures out of this stone has always been –
from the Greeks to Michelangelo or Bernini– a battle to curve the rigid axis, and lay bare suppleness in the stone, relaxing the stateliness of the stone.’

BASALT

Once she had conquered the challenge that she had set for herself in her Litolaxa series, Maru turned to basalt, the hardest material for sculptors to work. Imagine trying to bend a majestic Egyptian statue. Maru admires the sculptor Isamu Noguchi as the greatest artist to work in basalt.

‘Basalt is the most challenging stone. It is the densest and the heaviest. The force and gravity of basalt is like a very powerful energy of nature.’

GLASS

Compared to the tough battle with stone, working in glass is a kind of physical and mental relaxation for the artist. Over time, Maru’s personal process has softened the presence of artistic ego, to become more attuned to the glass, which is given shape through heat. The action of the artist melds with the chaos of the material.

‘Glass is a truly malleable stone, it’s all about physics. That is its truth and its difficulty.

My means of expression has always been intuitive. With glass, I have five seconds to act, and I’ve faced the open kiln to strike the glass plate and thus create expressivity… it’s brute force, pure instinct.

I don’t try to tell glass to do what it doesn’t… unlike with stone… Glass tells you, and then opens a window for action. You raise the kiln and discover the hap and expressivity of the material…‘

AVAILABLE WORK

Vestals

Basalt and glass

Litolaxa

Idylls

HERE YOU CAN SEE all my work for sale.

Materials: marble, basalt and glass.
Sizes: small, medium and large scale
Prices: consult. Between € 3,000 and € 20,000

TESTIMONIALS

RAMÓN PORTUONDO

Gallerist and Art Collector

“Your family has always had an artistic side, and you have it as well, Maru. I love your work and even though I am just a mini-collector, I am so happy to live together in my house with one of your marble pieces.”

PASCUA ORTEGA

Decorator

“When Art becomes a friend. I have two sculptures by Maru Oriol, two fantastic marble pieces, one white and the other black. The black one is at my home and the white one is out in the country. Both pieces transcend their creative and aesthetic message; they are something more. They are ever-present and amiable, and speak to me, and are like friends. By the way, in my profession, I’ve had the chance to present Maru’s work to a number of people, and they’ve always become friends”.

ELENA FOSTER

Founder and Director of Ivorypress

“Our two pieces by the artist Maru Oriol in white marble provide light, bring calm and capture time. With their sinuous forms, they express the enormity of the spaces of our family home in Madrid.”