Pedro Pablo Oliva

Muchacha condenada a vivir con una piedra en la cabeza, from the series Eternas condenas, 2009

Bronze sculpture, 94 x 56 x 23 cm.


  • En esta obra el artista nos desconcierta con una poesía visual del más alto nivel. Se trata de una imagen onírica, como salida de un sueño. Un ser angelical, condenada a vivir entre dos rocas, una que le sirve de pedestal, y otra que le oprime el cuerpo todo.
  • Contemporary art conveys the attitudes and expressions of the people, and it challenges the viewer to recognize some of the conflicts of our time.
  • As ever with Pedro Pablo Oliva’s visually stunning sculptures, once more this charmed work of art astonishes us with a great exceptionality.
  • En esta escultura de bronce, de una belleza tiernamente metafórica, el artista Pedro Pablo Oliva nos desconcierta con una poesía visual del más alto nivel.
  • Perteneciente a la llamada generación del setenta, la primera formada por el sistema de enseñanza creado por la revolución, Pedro Pablo Oliva ha mantenido una producción artística ininterrumpida por más de cuatro décadas.

The strange Muchacha condenada a vivir con una piedra en la cabeza (Young lady condemned to live with a stone on her head) is a sculpture with a tenderly metaphoric beauty. In this work, the artist astonishes us with a visual poetry that belongs to the highest level. It is about an oneiric image, one that seems to have emerged from a dream. This is an angelic being, one that is condemned to live between two rocks: one of them is useful as a pedestal, and the other one oppresses her whole body. A naked body, rolled on itself in a fetal position, as if it had recently been born to the world; with weird marks on the back, as if the skin was changing, as if it was in transit to another state of nature. Two symbols characteristic of Oliva’s pictorial poetics are combined in this sculpture: stone and lizard. The stone is a visual symbol of the weight of all limitations, obstacles, and constraints that society, political systems, and moral prejudices imposed to people, to the full development of individuality. On its side, the lizard is the metaphor of change, simulation, and opportune camouflage. The lizard changes the skin depending on the environment, the circumstances. It needs to be invisible to the sight of its potential predators. This strange young lady, whose face denotes quietness, seems to be immersed in a deep sleep, or in a state of trance, of meditation. Will she change her skin like the lizard? Will she be free and satisfied in her nature? Or, will she continue bearing, in a submissive way, the weight of the stone, of the oppression, of the spiritual shutting in? In order to know, Oliva invites us to get lost in the delight of his visual poetry, a delight that freezes time and introduces us in the eternity of art.