( Spain 丨 1947 - )

It is always spoken of this artist category which live at the margin of society who seldom reach the success and the consideration fo his contemporary and they are called «damned artists», a word which proceed, as many others more, from the french language. 

Andres Nagel is not a dammed artist. He profits of the best what the society can offer to him and in fact his work develop itself thematically in a very personal interpretation of the faces, vices and habits which this society shows him. There is something immodest in a part of his production, because Nagel offer a radical, ironic and rough picture of the aspects which attract his attention, but perhaps the most serious accent is given by this peculiar artist attitude in not criticize morally, not to make qualitative valuations, but a threat of analytical descriptions. 

Andres Nagel is not a dammed artist, he is an artist dammed. He is a person who isolate himself in the middle of a crowd. He is the last model of the archetype tragic artist. Sensitive and at the same time cruel he observes and smiles and afterwards constructs a work which find himself at the margin of all and of everybody. In fact, in many cases and in view of the impossibility to classify his work he will be excluded of groups and tendencies. Because what he does is sculpture but it is so near to the painting... he was painter, sketcher and the treatment he does in everyone of his works, maintain the line, for instance, is a clear proof of it. The sketch run always, it is the base of his work, together with the ductile materials utilization, generally in cutted plates of light weight and which can be used without expensive process and without help of nothing and of no-body. His works seem to come from any pictures and generally represents scenes closer to the history of our infantile trimmings that to any other. 

Cutting reality fragments, Andres Nagel is constructing one unpredictable work and there are few artists in the present rainbow that are more deeply coherent whit himself. Dammed artist who give us to think and put us every type of barrier to our formula well-worn and applicable to the profession rest. 

The relationship between the personal characteristics of the man and his work as artist are always present in the study of every artist. Curiously, it is possible to paint resemblances which explain the work understanding and the approach to the winding personalities. This norm run perfect with Nagel, with a typical lite, a complicated origin and the life by himself chosen and with totally contradictory facets, we can better understand that his work has the characteristics that it has. Because many remain on the surface and they have defined it as pop, as ironic commentator of the artistic society, as a sculptor beginner that cannot come in. in the current technical process of the sculpture... The reality is that a man of Germanic origin and university education (he studied architecture) is born and live in a small and provincial town of northern Spain and that never practiced his degree. A cosmopolitan that travel through the world visiting the most hidden sites and decide to live isolated in a classic bourgeois villa, who was present as a priviledge observer to the crumbling of a whole life form of a society; is something that urge to the curiosity. 

But Nagel is a dammed artist who feel himself, not concerned because he prefers to put one of his works in a barber's shop, perhaps than in a museum. Because the most important for him is not the last destination of the work but the form in which it is considered. 

Nagel maintains this special infantile character, apparently innocent, surprising himself for almost everything, joking and smiling at the expense of whoever he is, but at bottom he is as these temble children of fear films. Behind this big child, behind this astonishillg look shelter one man of delicate irony and with a knowledge of all what he is seeing which surpass any foresight. It is a real danger. Nagel is a solitary being and this circumstance shape his personal work, near to many things but at bottom completely isolated solitary. He has nothing to do with nobody and at the same time maintain a faithful tradition and respect for the history. 

Anyhow many of his works presents a fragment of the present social situation, whether directly or comparatively. On the one hand Nagel is narrowly bond with the communication means (in fact, in many of his works appears elements as newspapers, television sets or radios) and specially with the receivers of this massive communication. But he uses also the narrative structure, but essentially fragmentary, where the formal line is figurative and the narration is always present. 

Nagel offer us the detail as a whole and there is situated his peculiar to bring up to day the eucharistic play, making from the detail the argument, analyzing cooly and without pity any situation, always from outside. 

Another formal element to take in considerations is the baroque which his groups and also his figures maintain from the beginning of his work. An accumulation of elements, a variety of forms and colours that does not place him neither on a priviledge site of the spanish sculptorical tradition. The colour , with abundance of pastel shades is another factor to have in account in his work and very specially in the sculptorical, since with the treatment of forms and colours that Nagel gives to many of his sculptures, transform himself in a person still more isolated on the spanisch creative panorama. Always was he brand as «litlle serious» and also were somebody who says that the works seem to be more carnival figures than serious sculptures... Perhaps he is missing the dramatism of a George Segal but there is nothing innocent in his work. One of the causes to utilize the materials (generally fibre-glass and other which can be malleable and not too heavy) is done throungh the personal characteristics of this artist. He likes to work alone to shape himself the sculptures, to see them in evolution, to work in his house-shop, sit out to bend himself to the routine nor to the works sacrifices in melting workshops, furnaces, assistants, and so on. 

But there is another factor that we cannot forget and it is that although in his last stages Nagel has pierce one frontier which find itself between the sculpture and the painting, today he is considered as a sculptor but for me he was always a painter. The colour, the narrative interpretation of the figures, the subjects and its treatment in coming always from the painting, even in his pieces sculptorically pure. This fastening for the planes in order to obtain volumes, the creation of lively scenes upon painted bottoms. There is much scenography in his work the same as there is much trick in his scene presentation. But above all, Andres Nagel is a narrator of these small and big stupid tragedies that happen to us every day. 

We are in presence of the work of a dammed artist that really works only for himself, for his pleasure and for counting in the form he likes and as he likes what appear interesting to him. The rest is not his problem. Favoured in some form through the gods he permits himself to look at us from this persornal recess which has created while God knows what will think of us the supposed receivers of his works.