Jaume Plensa

(Spanish, born 1955)

Jaume Plensa is a contemporary Spanish artist best known for his depictions of the human face through sculpture and innovative technology. His commission Crown Fountain (2004), a public installation in Chicago’s Millennium Park, proved to be a turning point in his career. In the work, large reflective towers utilize LEDs to project close-up images of faces. “Sculpture is not only talking about volumes. It is talking about something deep inside ourselves that without sculpture we cannot describe,” he explained. “We are always with one foot in normal life and one foot in the most amazing abstraction. And that is the contradiction that is life.” Born on August 23, 1955 in Barcelona, Spain where he currently lives and works, Plensa studied at the Llotja School of Art and Design and at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Art in Spain in the 1970s. Plensa has transitioned from an abstraction to figuration of the course of his career. The artist’s works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Palazzo Forti in Verona, the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, among others.