Music Box I

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1968 · Authors: Agustín Cárdenas Alfonso

The Cuban artist Agustín Cárdenas (Matanzas, Cuba, 1927-Havana, Cuba, 2001) created this sculpture in 1968, which was part of the I International Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition , held in 1973 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

The work, made of marble on a concrete pedestal, is a piece of great nobility crafted for contemplation and rest, of enormous serenity and profound love for the material. As a brilliant heir of Brancusi, Arp and Stahly, Cárdenas draws lyrical allusions of great beauty from nature. Its central perforated circle could be linked to air and the “music” it might be capable of emitting, or the whole could be a hermetic speaker with convex faces.

Music Box I was temporarily installed on the stretch of the Rambla between the bullring and Horacio Nelson street. The sculpture was later returned to the private gallery that had lent it for its provisional exhibition in Santa Cruz.

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