Francisco Sobrino Biography
Sobrino Francisco (Guadalajara, 1932) Francisco Sobrino is a Spanish artist, born in Guadalajara in 1932. He studied at the Escuela de Arte y Oficios in Madrid and then at the National School of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He continued his studies in Paris, where he began to approach visual art, studying the structure and dynamics of form and color. His works are predominantly in black and white. In 1960 he founded the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV) together with Julio Le Parc, Francois Morellet and others, in which he supported the idea of art with a social function, understood not as a single product but as a collective product. Subsequently Sobrino dedicated himself to three-dimensional constructions, in which he combined modular plexiglass elements with regular structures, which appeared differently based on the angle from which they were observed. In 1964 he participated in Documenta in Kassel and subsequently in the exhibition “The Responsive Eye” at the MoMA in New York. He created one of his first urban interventions in Sarcelles in France, building a large stainless steel structure and in the same period he focused on the effects of light, reflections and optical illusions created by shadows. In 1968 the GRAV group disbanded, but the artist still continued his studies on three-dimensional constructions. In the 1970s he was commissioned to place several installations in public places in Madrid and Paris. In 1972 he studied the technique through which to channel solar energy into his works, creating self-energetic sculptures in 1981. Sobrino's works are preserved in important museums, such as the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
