Fernando Costa / texte de Johan-Frederik Hel-Guedj.

This is the first book dedicated to Fernando Costa, an eclectic, self-taught artist, born in France to a family that arrived in the country on foot from Portugal while fleeing the dictatorship of Salazar in 1970. Costa dissects enamelled street signs, cuts them up, smoothes them off, and reassembles the pieces by welding them onto large metal plaques to create works of extraordinary originality. The result is striking, as shown in this colourful monograph. Some are figurative, the cousins of Pop art, infused with a personal element, as they include tragic or comical moments and figures that have influenced the sculptor during his lifetime: the cyclist Tom Simpson, the Beatles, and Josephine Baker. Other works flirt with abstraction derived from Cubism and the mechanical music of Edgar Varèse. All display freedom, movement, energy, and the interplay of primary colours. Whether small in size or imposing triptychs, the works of Fernando Costa achieve a rare feat: imbuing metal with emotion.

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