Mark Bava – Fine Art Bronze Sculptor

Biography

Mark Bava typifies human character and behavior in his figurative sculpture and gives us that character isolated and exemplified. He was born in 1954 and raised in a small agricultural town in the Central Valley of California among Italian peach farmers that had immigrated there from Italy as did his father and grandparents. However, he was also raised with an artistic background as his mother was an impressionist painter. From the beginning he took a strong interest in art and as a child could cite the work and theories of the various Impressionists. He painted his first painting- an impressionistic still life when he was just nine years old. By high school the family had temporarily moved to Carmel, California where many of the Carmel artists and painters came to visit. His mother remarried another Italian painter and moved to Capri in the late 1960's where Bava visited as a teenager and traveled through Italy and Greece seeing the art, antiquities and ancient ruins at Pompeii, Rome and Athens.

In the mid-70s he attended art school at CSUStanislaus whose instructors were largely from New York and at the time boasted a contemporary curriculum and art dept to rival the SF Art Institute. Through the school's art programs, some winter semesters were spent in New York under sculptor Ralf Parton which he cites as a major pivot point; “My knowledge of art at that time was pretty much only through the Impressionists that I was raised with however contemporary art history along with studying in New York opened my eyes to post-war abstract expressionism as well as all the 50's and 60's movements in pop, op, minimalism, installation art, art happenings and all that. It was still a pretty vibrant time in the arts in New York. Not only was the Soho and uptown gallery scene still intact, but also in theater and music; the whole CBGBs and Studio 54 thing was still going on, Saturday Night Live had just debuted, the off-Broadway Theater Row playhouses were just starting up. I was glad to catch some of that.

Despite my mother being a painter and my interest in painting as a child, while there I somehow turned to sculpture rather than painting. I started working in plaster emphasizing surface textures and body language doing Giocometti/Neri-ish pieces but with my subject matter being statements on society. I did plaster studies of down and out street characters that I was seeing hanging out down on the Lower East Side and in the Bowery... however I was also always a history buff and loved Greek mythology and Biblical stories growing up...the archetypes weren't so far apart. I also loved the ruins and the fragmented sculpture and bits that I had seen in Italy and Greece when I had visited my family on Capri, like those ashen and lava covered figures at Pompeii...

So there's a combination of both modern and ancient societies and myths and statements on human character through body language... I try to freeze some kind of static "modern relic".

Mr. Bava also has considerable foundry and mold making experience working at Monterey Sculpture Foundries for 8 years. He is noted for his surface textures complete with chips, hacks, tool marks and casting flaws. He sites his influences as Giacometti, Lynn Chadwick, Manuel Neri and Kenneth Armitage as a few examples. His work is sold in galleries in San Francisco, Carmel, Atlanta and New York. In addition, he is a musician as a hobbyist and is also well known for his productions of large multi- media events in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Statement

My work is more conceptual in that I focus on texture and body language over form and design to create a character commentary. I save my mistakes and sometimes utilize casting flaws. I try to give the figures an "iconic" quality or the look of primitive relics. I'm a history and sociology buff. I love old ruins and broken statuary. I get a lot of my ideas just looking at those forms and surfaces.

 

Galleries

Gruen Gallery-Chicago, Ill

Renaissance Fine Arts, Baltimore, Bethesda, Md. and Haverford, Pa.

Sculpture Site/New Leaf Gallery, Sonoma, Ca
Christopher Hill Gallery, St Helena, Ca.
Gallery 21, Carmel, Ca.
Del Jou Art Group, Atlanta, Ga

 

"clothes"	"guardian"	"mantie"	"9am"
"spartan"	"power brokers"	"spectators"	"symbiosis"

Return to Gallery