Sylvia Ramírez Rello

SYLVIA RAMIREZ RELLO causes the stone to escape from its ancestral death by giving it life through form. The sculptress takes from the stony shapelessness the form it unknowingly contained and in so doing creates the sap which is to run through the hard pores of the mass- until that moment inert, henceforth quickened.

This form is not necessarily the human form or that of another being: any form the sculptress draws from the stone and in which she succeeds in fusing the two prime elements - matter: that of the stone, and mind, or soul: that of the sculptor - and whether it be abstract or concrete - Implies a creation.

Through the sculptor’s alchemy the stone turns its matter, its solid presence, its inert mass, into life. And into eternal life - that is for as long as our civilization endures, which is the only eternity we are able to conceive of. Not even Paracelsus could imagine a better way of achieving the transformation of matter, the discovery of the elixir of life. Sylvia Ramirez Rello, as sculptress-alchemist, in seducing the stone, conquers it and, in conquering it, transmutes it and endows it with eternal youth.

The beauty of the Venus de Milo has outlived the very goddess it represents. The block of marble is stone; the form the sculptor gives it, soul. The form created in a quest for beauty, transcends beauty and becomes light illuminating the stone from within.

The marble is thus transmuted into life, the sculptor into creator and the sculpture into philosopher’s stone.

Marcela del Río Reyes.
Dr. of Philosophy and Letters.

A return to what is natural, what is real, to what is seen by ordinary men and women, without the fantasy of disciples of the various “isms”, is what SYLVIA RAMIREZ RELLO is showing us. The artist is anxious to give us a faithful picture of contemporary society: the feelings of normal men and women, modern technology, work, love, the fear of violence, be it physical or intellectual.

She is following in tracks already made by great masters of sculpture down the centuries (Michelangelo, Rodin).

Each of her works exhibits that which only women can give to their creativity: energy, strength and gentleness combined – like an embrace, like a kiss. She is saying to us “… I believe we artists should work for the masses, not for any ultra-intellectualized elite…”

Here are her works, reflecting those everyday things all we common mortals can see and which in one way or another affect us; they touch our human feelings almost desensitized by the consumer society and induce us to meditate and reflect on something other than the cold machine.

W. Vogel.
Lateinamerika-Galerie, Abril 1978.
Berlín.

Spatially well-delimited, Sylvia Ramirez’s sculpture captivates the eye of the beholder.

There is no gesticulation; the movement of the volumes is interiorized, condensed.

Her modeling, animated and full sensitivity, breathes life into the well-balanced forms discerned in finely worked-out compositions.

Reflexion and feeling constitute the harmony that emanates from these works, which, at the same time, possess life content.

Michel Smolders.
Renowned Belgian Sculptor.