Jaume Plensa is the Catalan sculptor best known for monumental heads with closed eyes, colossal and serene, figures that seem to be thinking something the viewer is not invited to hear. Salzburg has two points of contact with his work: the permanent Awilda in a university courtyard, and monumental iron heads that have appeared on Residenzplatz during the Salzburg Festival.
The Story
Plensa's signature is the closed eye. His large-scale busts, whether in white marble, resin, or iron, share the quality of withdrawal: faces that have turned inward, figures that are present in the physical sense and absent in every other. The scale makes the privacy more pronounced. A five-metre head with closed eyes is not ignoring you. It is simply somewhere else.
Awilda (2010) stands in the Dietrichsruh courtyard of the University of Salzburg's law faculty on Kapitelgasse. It is part of the ninth Salzburg Art Project, a programme through which the Salzburg Foundation placed significant international sculpture in public spaces across the historic centre. The bust is carved from white Spanish marble, five metres tall, and takes its name from a legendary Scandinavian pirate queen: a surprising reference that sits quietly behind the face's peaceful surface.
Plensa came to international attention with Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millennium Park in 2004, two fifty-foot glass towers projecting the faces of a thousand Chicago residents over a reflecting pool. The scale and the democratic instinct behind that work carry through to his European pieces.
The courtyard on Kapitelgasse is open year-round, free to enter, and the marble catches the light differently at different times of day. Finding it requires a short detour off the main tourist routes, which is part of what makes it worth finding.
