Relaciones formales entre la escultura primitiva y el arte popular en Ávila

The universal and timeless nature of the shape and its duration over time together with the popular design, offers a new approach to the identity and sense of the human being; all of which has been put forward in this thesis from the particular point of view of the city of Avila.
The language of the shape, the sculpture, shows itself as an innate and necessary creative process for our nature; Sculpture can stay throughout time as witness and connection among people beyond time and space.
This is the bottom line of this thesis that starts from a specific place: Avila, offering some conclusions with universal effects, as it proposes a journey to the feeling, emotion, and reason from the thoughtful meditation that arises with the necessity for the universal creative process.
I have chosen two marginal moments with regard to the traditional artistic conception officially accepted, since this may enable us to come closer to the essence of concepts such as identity, survival and creation.
We are talking about the original primitivism that starts in the ancient times with the first plastic movements of the human being until the integration of the culture developed in these territories into a wider and more guided context of the roman culture.
As an artistic discipline, sculpture allows a different view from the scientific one. Sculpture enables to study elements of remarkable artistic value by its beauty, concretion, poetry, expressiveness of the shape, the purpose and materialization of fate. Aspects that change visibly insipid objects, beyond its historical and testimonial value, into sources of contemplation, knowledge and artistic enjoyment that exceed even the initial functional validity in those cases in which they existed. We are talking about the vitality that we perceive out of its mere presence as artistic elements.
We are conditioned by our own cultural attitude when we look at an object. We are heirs of the classicism, but also of an identity less recognized and transmitted, among others, by manifestations like the popular art that arose with the first artistic manifestations and that has been continued until today.
It is, therefore, the most extended artistic style in any culture whose creative essence has maintained the same ancient and primitive sense which, step by step, we have forgotten, and which we have resumed in light of the contemporaneity.
Three topic paths lead us to study the topic in depth until the final conclusions: Techniques and materials, subject matters and formal aspects.
In all of them, we can study the inner essence in depth, which is common either to the primitive and to the popular, as a result of the particular human relations of both moments with reference to the natural surrounding and also to the socio-economic arena, which is characterized by a self-sufficient economy.
According to the cultural aspect; the unusual acquisition of materials and elements that we can call «exotic» will provide decorative and symbolic prominence; as compared with the more useful work conditioned by the feasibility of materials and a greater development of its own techniques. These materials are also influenced by a common subject matter which came to produce formal characteristic results, which were passed on from generation to generation and were sought by the author in each new creation.
The easiness of techniques like incision or engraving as well as the simplicity and force of some shapes give a faster and deepest assimilation into the formal unconscious.
These characteristics determine a formal conception that flows freely between the abstraction and representational art, without achieving high levels of realism and which
in some occasions become more prominent in their relations with the materials proposed by conceptions and movements of great plastic vitality of the twentieth century.
The concept and the subject matter merge completely to develop a more or less complicated game of various iconic interpretations depending on the case.
The vitality of the shape changes over time with each new look, and eventually can cause confusion and impoverishment by the loss of original models.
The subject matter assumes the suitability of the shape to its utility either in connection with the functionality of everyday s life, or with the most intangible aspects of the existence from the author’s artistic personality and, by extension, of the community in which he lives, in the same way as we are creating today.
From a deeper analysis, we can infer the various values and elements in which authors from different times and places converge, above the conscious level.
This idea formulates some very interesting and not so well-known human relations whose testimony lasts throughout the popular art.
We are talking about an artistic manifestation that was born from the beginning of time, which brings together concepts and subject matters despite the distortion, already mentioned, due to the loss or transformation of the original code.
This isn’t the case with the design of shapes and drawings, which have been passing on in a quite pure formal state, despite the modifications of the individual making or the adaptation according to the moment and its circumstances.
A fundamental event is presence of a milestone, elements that will be even adopted to transcend the very best expression as recognized symbols as well as timeless stimulus, though materialized under different advocations.
It could be claimed that, although the popular art is quite faithful to the shape and design, it is by far, more faithful to his inner essence, which explains the persistence in the same personality through pieces with different stages of a process of becoming baroque.
We can conclude by telling that our creative experience is universal but we need to return to the origins of our current formulations in order to return to our own human nature to understand our creative needs, to appreciate the artistic values and the importance of the creative fact, giving strength to the knowledge and thereby growing as a particular and global community.

The universal and timeless nature of the shape and its duration over time together with the popular design, offers a new approach to the identity and sense of the human being; all of which has been put forward in this thesis from the particular point of view of the city of Avila.