Take Apart and Look Again

Lord of a sumptuous villa, master of a 200-worker foundry, Miguel Berrocal is, at 36, the latest in a long and rather glorious tradition of Spanish grandees in the arts. Like Picasso and Dali before him, he is both a dazzling technician and a self-consciously public personality, immoderately gifted and immodestly inclined to say so. With his French-born wife Michele, he presides over the 40-room Villa Rizzardi outside Verona, a Renaissance palazzo set among stately cypresses and broad formal gardens that he has studded with his own works. There, the couple entertains some of the top sculptors of Europe, who seek out Berrocal's foundry for expert casting and professional guidance. "I'm the boss of the Mafia of sculptors," he says.

Double-Entendres. Berrocal's own sculptures are the best advertisement of his professional skills. They are composed of as many as 40 tightly interlocking parts, so intricately fitted that never a bolt or a screw is necessary. Taken apart, they look like a field strip of some improbable machine gun. Putting them together again requires the aid of an instruction sheet, which accompanies each work.

Berrocal's sculptures are more than ingenious gadgets. Currently on display at Manhattan's Loeb and Krugier Gallery, they are handsome works of art, rich in double-entendres about the literary and legendary characters that they portray. Berrocal's Cleopatra, for example, is a curvaceous seductress whose voluptuous thighs, when the proper key is turned, open to reveal a red velvet jewel box inside. Her face disassembles into a bracelet that can be removed and worn by the owner. The most dramatic work is one called Alfa and Romeo, which looks like a demure pair of lovers in a hand-to-hand embrace. But wait. A sharp below-the-belt blow to Romeo brings down Alfa's blouse and releases a knife that whips with dazzling speed into her midsection.

The idea of works that can be disassembled, says Berrocal, grew out of his conviction that sculpture is primarily an art that appeals to both hand and eye. To feel what the sculptor felt when he made it, the viewer should be able to hold its weight in his hand--an experience that can be satisfyingly sensual.

The Mini-Multiple. Born into a comfortable bourgeois family in Malaga, Berrocal studied architecture and mathematics before setting off for Rome and art studies in 1952. After a spell in Paris, he wound up in Verona because of the excellent foundry that was there. He is presently obsessed with the idea of spreading his art around the world. "A Berrocal in every house and a Berrocal in every pocket," is his slogan. To implement it, he conceived of something he calls the "mini-multiple" --reproductions that are identical with his expensive cast bronzes except for size and material. A 5 1/4 inch nickel Mini-David (one of 9,500) sells for $75 and is a perfectly duplicated cast of the original 11 1/2 inch David, which sells for $6,000. With his plans for a mini-multiple priced as low as $10 by 1970, he will bring a Berrocal within the reach of nearly anyone--or at least, anyone who wants to reach.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.