The stucco and the artist Iva Viana were destined to meet. He was born in Viana do Castelo, a city in the north of Portugal, bathed by the waters of the Atlantic and the Limia River, which hides the architectural richness arising from an ancient tradition in stucco craftsmanship. However, Iva discovered this treasure almost by chance after graduating in Fine Arts at the University of Porto. This material, used for centuries to make of houses, palaces, palaces, churches and cathedrals, today takes on new life in the hands of this Portuguese sculptor. She drinks from the legacy of the master craftsmen of her land, but reinterprets it to create contemporary works that show off their freshness and expressive strength in private residences, restaurants and luxury hotels, such as the Four Seasons in London, the Shangri-La in Paris…
From a very young age she was fascinated by volumes and the play of light and shadow, and chose to train as a sculptor. In this stage of exploration, he worked different materials, plaster, stone, sand, ceramics, and lived enriching periods in Brazil, Mozambique and Krakow. His crush on stucco occurred when he started working at a large French decorative plaster company based in Portugal. There he learned the trade and also caressed the desire to fly on his own. “For six years it was for me a real technical school, with Portuguese stuccoers. It was a period of a lot of production, but little creativity, and I left to have more freedom and a more aspirational role,” he says. After his journey, he returned to the starting square, his hometown, Viana do Castelo, the best possible place to cultivate his art. “It is the capital of plasters, the best plasterers in Portugal were born here,” he says. There, in 2013, he created his sculpture atelier, where he freely explores the connection between traditional techniques of natural stucco molding with modern casting processes of other materials. Always calmly and patiently. She likes “to have time to think, time to fall in love with the project and time to rectify if necessary.
Delphina Broached
Delphina Broached
Delphina Broached
Delphina Broached
Delphina Broached
“This is a wonderful city to live in, surrounded by sea, river and mountains, and it gives me the quality of life to create,” he adds. An expert rower, she loves to sail the Limia River on her boat after the days in the workshop. This landscape has inspired one of his most ambitious projects and the first outdoors, started in 2021: four facades in four eight-meter-high buildings in Viana do Castelo. The first façade is ready to be assembled and has now begun to model the second, in a new material with a stone base, which resists the weather. “The four facades tell a single story: my gaze every time I go out rowing,” he says. Soon she will fulfill a dream: to move to a new house on the land of what was a parish, steep on the slope of a mountain overlooking the sea, near her workshop and her husband’s project, a hostel for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. Among his plans are to create a space for those who want to learn plaster plaster stucco and plaster modeling, and to continue exploring in his workshop, together with his team, João Cruz and Gustavo Fonseca. “I want to get out of the walls, to make pedestal sculptures,” he says.
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Delphina Broached
Delphina Broached
