Enrique Carbajal (1947) is the most important Mexican representative of contemporary sculpture at the international level. His works also include other artistic expressions such as painting, architecture and design. It is better known throughout the world as Sebastian, nickname adopted very early in his career by the artist from Ciudad Camargo, in Chihuahua, Mexico.
His specialty has to do with monumental urban sculpture, which in modern art refers to large works. This type of art is characterized by being more intended for the public, since it is usually found in outdoor areas.
His works use principles from other scientific areas, as he relies on the use of disciplines such as mathematics and geometry. In addition, sciences such as crystallography or topology have influenced his work.
Enrique Carbajal's works are easy to identify thanks to his use of geometric shapes and the presence of materials such as steel and concrete. It has more than 200 works in various cities around the world.
The majesty of his works allows some of his great sculptures to be seen from space. He is listed by Mathias Goeritz, an important German artist based in Mexico, as the most relevant Mexican sculptor of the time..
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The Mexican artist was born in Mexico on November 16, 1947, more specifically in Camargo, a city that belongs to the state of Chihuahua. His full name is Enrique Carbajal González Santiván.
His mother, Soledad Carbajal, dedicated herself to sewing. According to Carbajal, she was the culprit of his passion for the plastic arts. Soledad was the one who spoke to him for the first time about great artists and gave him certain bases to understand art.
His mother affectionately called him 'Enriqueiros' in clear reference to David Alfaro Siqueiros, a famous Mexican artist who was also a native of Camargo.
His family is completed by his grandmother Ramona González and his brothers Raymundo and Ramón. Enrique's siblings were older than him by more than 10 years and all three were children of different parents. Ramón was the father figure in Carbajal's life.
In 1964 he moved to Mexico City without many economic possibilities, even without anywhere to live. He was only 16 years old and he came to sleep on the street.
Once in Mexico City, Carbajal manages to enroll in the National School of Plastic Arts of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), formerly known as the Academia de San Carlos..
Due to his low economic possibilities, he became a kind of ghost within the institution, since some days he had to live within the academic campus.
Today, the Mexican artist recounts that stage of his life without problems and recalls some anecdotes. Among them, Carbajal says that at night he turned on the light in some rooms to be able to carry out his work.
This caused the guards to have to go to the place to turn off the lights on several occasions, without knowing why they were turned on..
It took months to discover the situation in which Enrique Carbajal lived. The plastic artist, Benjamín Domínguez got Carbajal to sleep on a sofa located in the Student Society.
During his student period he met the works of Leonardo da Vinci and the German artist Albrecht Dürer, through whom he began to delve into geometry.
Although his name is Enrique Carbajal, he is better known in the world as Sebastián Escultor. He took this name in the late 60s, due to various moments in his life that made him believe that this pseudonym was haunting him.
According to Carbajal's own stories, it all started when he was a student at UNAM. In one of their subjects they were exhibiting on Botticelli's work San Sebastián, but the then student fell asleep, a fact notorious to the rest of his classmates, who since then referred to Carbajal as San Sebastián.
Years later, Spanish citizens who were refugees in Mexico organized a dinner in honor of President Luis Echeverría. At the event was the poet Carlos Pellicer, who told Carbajal that it seemed that he had left the work of Botticelli, San Sebastián.
Months later the anecdote would occur that would end up being definitive. After an interview on French art, Carbajal was referred to as an artist of Mexican origin who bore a great resemblance to Andrea Mantegna's San Sebastián..
At that moment he decided to do something about it and adopted Sebastián as a strong name for him. For Carbajal it was relevant that his pseudonym could be written and pronounced in any language in almost the same way.
Then he added Escultor as a surname, since he thought that this way it was easier to determine his profession, especially for Spanish-speaking people, as well as the English.
Werner Matthias Göeritz was one of the great influences that Carbajal had during his life. He dedicated himself to various areas of art, such as sculpture, architecture, painting, and writing. Of German origin, he lived in Mexico since 1952.
Carbajal met Göeritz when he was only 16 years old. He became an assistant to the German and traveled with him to Jerusalem, Israel, for several months.
In addition, he studied with special interest the work of the English sculptor Henry Spencer Moore. For Carbajal, Moore was very important because it allowed him to recognize different elements present in the sculptures.
Carbajal's works are contemporary with movements such as minimalism, scientism and pop-art, among other currents. He gained fame with his work with the works Transformable. These pieces can take different shapes when manipulated. Among them it has Leonardo4, Dürer4 and Brancusi4.
The number 4 meant that these works had four dimensions. They were characterized by being participatory works, a concern that was very marked at the beginning of his career. They were based on models of mathematics.
Although his first major work was the Victoria rose window. This work was done in 1967 and there you can see characteristics of kinetic art.
He wrote in 1970 the work World's largest sculpture, where he presented the idea he had of creating a work that had dimensions so large that it could even exceed the Earth.
More than 200 works bear his stamp, but not only on a sculptural level. He also did works in areas such as painting, design, jewelry, and architecture. His works are exhibited in different countries of the world. Mexico obviously has a large number of works by the author, but it is also possible to see his stamp in Italy, France, Brazil, Israel, Spain, Cuba, Argentina and Germany.
Some of his sculptures can be appreciated from space with the use of space technology. This is because a large part of his projects were focused on the creation of large sculptures in urban areas..
He has written a total of five books, in which he tries to teach, especially to children, his knowledge of geometry.
On the Asian continent he has won several awards for the sculptures he has made. Most of his works have been made there since he participated in different competitions to work in different cities. In Osaka he even received awards for his work in the area of painting.
He started in 1993 with a competition that allowed him to devise a sculpture that would serve as a symbol for the city of Sakai, which is called Phoenix Bow. Later, in 1995 he did the same in the city of Kadoma, with Tsuru. These works are joined by other sculptures such as Migration, Excelsitud Y Life Sphere, located in Tokyo, Kansai and Osaka.
His works stand out in urban sites in different cities around the world. He enriches his work with the use of mathematics, in which he also tries to project a message on an aesthetic level.
His sculptures stand out for having different shapes and for the use of different colors. Some of them are modular and can be transformed.
For his sculptural work he has received more than 10 awards. Five of them were received in Japan. In Norway he was awarded the jury prize of the International Graphic Triennial.
In addition, he was honored with the National Prize for Sciences and Arts of Mexico, which honors the best exponents of the country's literature, culture, technology, arts and sciences..
Carbajal received the award in the Fine Arts category in 2015, together with Ignacio López Tarso and Fernando López Carmona. The Mexican even has a noble title in Denmark.
For his career, he has also received the honorary degree of Doctor honoris causa from six institutions. These doctorates were awarded by the University of La Laguna, Chihuahua, Colima, the Autonomous Metropolitan and the Autonomous of the State of Mexico. He is also an honorary doctorate from New York City College, a distinction he received in 2008.
Carbajal is part of different associations throughout the world. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, as an honorary member. He is also part of the Academy of Arts in Mexico and one more member of the International Committee for Conservation, in Lascaux, France..
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