In the beginning there was a sphere, actually many spheres. “When I was a young boy I saw them in the museum of San José , Costa Rica , the capital city of my country -- the only country in the world that, since 1948, has definitively abolished military forces. I was strongly impressed by these spheres” says the fifty-year-old Jorge Jiménez Deredia, waving his hands and gazing intently, his kind smile framed by his short , grizzled beard, identical in color to the mane on his head. “About 1,700 years ago the native American Boruca s made the spheres by smoothing a block of granite. They are the only abstract sculptures retrieved before Christopher Columbus ’ arrival in Costa Rica in 1502, which was during the last of his four journeys. At that time, many multi-sized spheres could be found: they weighed up to 15 tons and they were lined up on the ground ( following schemes, calculus and principles which are still unclear to us ) according to the movement of the sun and the stars.

They were removed around 1940 to provide space for intensive cultivation of the banana industry, which was in demand by the Americans. So most of the spheres disappeared ; some were taken for private use, some ended up in front of public buildings, and many others , luckily, were brought to the museum. Drawings belonging to two American archaeologists of that time exist which provide information on how they were lined up. To this day, I have classified about 60 spheres. The museum will launch an appeal asking anyone who possesses one of the spheres to hand it , so that the museum can carry on with their research in detail. The spheres were all located in a small area of the Pacific. They represent important proof of a civilization, maybe minor (neither Maya nor Inca ) but which flourished for about four thousand years”.

In the beginning there was a sphere, actually many spheres. “I only understood what they represented, what their real meaning was after many years. It became clear to me during the six years I spent in Florence studying architecture. Every day I walked along the same road. I stopped to look at the ashlars of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, and to admire Brunelleschi’s dome , which even sported a copper sphere above the lantern. Around me, I felt this city completely stretching up to the sky. I then realized that the sphere is the same circle used by Leonardo da Vinci in his Uomo Vitruviano (Vitruvian Man) and in the Studio delle Proporzioni (Study of the proportions). I put the Florentine art and architecture together with the Borucas’ rounded creations of my childhood. Without Florence , I would have probably never understood all this. It is also for this reason that from that time on I developed a deep love for this city. The place that in 1840 Alexandre Dumas père calls “the El Dorado of individual freedom” has been one of my benchmarks in the discovery of a much deeper identity than what was initially apparent”.



 



 

“ The “childhood spheres” erected a bridge linking spirituality and rationality; they represented the glue for an ethnic group . Through the spheres, Borucas discovered a part of themselves ; they justified their existence” explains Deredia, a sculptor who adds to his marble the pages written by one of the very first followers of Sigmund Freud -- Carl Gustav Jung (“At the Fine Arts Academy of Carrara, my final dissertation was based on a lecture of anatomic deformations in the work of Giovanni Pisano”) and he also narrates ancient and intriguing legends that perhaps he heard in his childhood, but of course have evolved extensively. “The white mountains are the tears of the stars; we come from the stars, we are stardust, a product of evolution deriving from a cosmic process to which we creatively participate. Truth is written in our hearts and not in ideologies. Sculpting is remembering ; marble is a gentle surface which breathes. Changing its appearance requires the same patience that a drop of water employs to modify the shape of a rock by slowly carving it inside the cavern. The modifying process of the material is a “mystic time” because it repeats and perpetuates the essential miracle of creation”.

In the beginning there was a sphere, actually many spheres . “That time, inside the museum of San José , I realized that the only thing I could do in life was to sculpt, comparing myself day after day to those masterpieces of simplicity and greatness. Even though my parents wanted me to become a doctor, this was the only possible path for me. It has not been easy, but I have managed to succeed”. The sculptor has always followed his chosen vocation. Even in hard times, he has never attempted a different job and he is proud of this. Stubbornness certainly for some, but a determination that many would desire. However, despite his success, he has remained modest to not mention, except only when explicitly asked, what it means being the first non-European artist in five hundred years to have a sculpture placed in the Basilica di San Pietro; what he felt when he took part in three Biennali of Venice International Art Exhibition s; and what it signifies being recogni zed by his own country -- for leaving at the young age of 20 with no explicit family agreement ( explained shortly) was rather adventurous. This is confirmed by the installment of two of his creations in San Jose, Costa Rica -- one, a five meter long work of art placed within the gardens of the Presidential House, and the other, a sculpture of a musician playing her flute outside the . National Theater. There is an interesting story about the National Theater: : in 1890, the popular soprano Adelina Patti (whose extraordinary voice and legendary compensations were equalled only by her tantrums typical of a diva ) excluded Costa Rica from her American tour , because it lacked an adequate place where she could stay. In seven years, with the help of European building contracters and with self-taxing coffee export revenues, the citizens built a theater quite similar to the Opéra in Paris . Then , when the soprano offered to sing in that theater, citizens refuse d her offer.

In the beginning there was a sphere, actually many spheres. “I do not like edges ” explains Mr . Jiménez Deredia , “because folds make life complicated. The ideal shape is the sphere. I try to present what we see in the world, together with its most intimate and deep essence. I’ve done many things because “inside” I felt that I had to do them -- I felt like a mysterious force ordered and forced me to do so. For instance, I “knew” I had to create by all means that statue in San Pietro”. “That statue” is four and a half meters tall; nearly five and a half including the stand. Its total weight is 32 tons (the figure alone weighs 20 tons). The statue was unveiled by Pope John Paul II on September 20, 2000 , and is located on the outside wall of the Basilica in the central niche of the left transept known as “San Giuseppe transept”. This is the only niche of all those located on the external perimeter that Michelangelo managed to see fully completed. The figure represents Marcellino Champagnat, an extremely unique character (like this story where nothing is commonplace or taken for granted). Pope Wojtyla proclaimed him a saint in 1999. Champagnat was born in France , in the Loire area, just after the French Revolution in 1789 , and died in 1840. He founded the Institute of Fratelli Maristi for Schools which today is present in 74 countries Jorge Jiménez Deredia has been chosen for a series of reasons. I met him by pure chance after he completed his sculpture. And today, he is amongst those people dearest to me ; amongst the most interesting and inspiring that I have ever known. This is how, a few years ago, he told me the story of his life. “When I was six years old, the vaccine against poliomyelitis arrived in my country. My whole family -- parents and seven children -- was vaccinated against it ; even my father who contracted a mild form of the disease when he was a boy. Unfortunately, he later became totally paralysed. For about a year, he was bedridden and could only move his head. Little by little with great effort, he got a bit better , although he always wanted me by his side because he constantly feared he would fall. I never left him for eight years. With great effort and difficulty, nearly slithering along the ground, he built the first house for all of us with his hands and later a second one, by the sea”.

“ At the age of twenty-two I won a scholarship to study in Italy . I was already married to Giselle. After seven months, at the end of the scholarship, I ripped up my return flight ticket ; I felt I had to stay in Italy and live near the Carrara marble quarries (the origin of Michelangelo’s marble) or maybe by the river Magra, where we have been living ever since. I attended the Fine Arts Academy in Carrara and the faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence . We did not have enough money to go back to Costa Rica for seven years. It took eleven years to have central heating installed in our house. To keep our son Esteban warm at night, we used to wrap old cloths around red-hot bricks from the fire, and place them under his mattress. (Esteban is now 28 years old, has a bachelor’s degree and a master ’s degree, and has worked for the United Nations. ) Despite surviving some hard times, I have never given up my dreams or adapted myself to jobs which weren’t mine. I used to show drawings to a friend and asked him for 150,000 Italian liras, promising him that I would make that sculpture for him. My wife and I have always been aware that we could spend only a fifth of the profit from each work. The rest was needed, and still is, to pay for other things such as the house, the workshop, the material.

 



Though, now, such a well-known artist who has been invited to three sessions of the Biennale of Venice (1988, 1993 and 1999) , and whose monumental sculpture dominates the Gardens of Latin America at Porte de Champerret in Paris (1989 ), and whose works are now displayed in 11 different countries -- has he become rich too? “I don’t think so , and above all I don’t need to be. I can’t sleep in more than one bed, and if I eat too much I feel ill -- never a coffee, hardly a glass of wine rigorously drunk with some company”. Every morning Deredia gets up at six o’clock and a glass of water is his breakfast. From 7 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 8 pm he works in his workshop. By 9 pm he is already in bed. He goes back to Costa Rica every year -- “I left my country without my father’s approval and this must have been quite hard for him, but I had to do it. We do not write nor telephone each other, but we spend 30 days out of 365 together”.

He destroys two models out of three he starts because they do not convince him. However, when he feels he has to do something, nothing can stop him. Moreover, his work has always relied on “high” inspirations which have been more than earthly. From this, the creation of his Composizioni cosmiche (cosmic compositions) where we still find the native spheres , or the wonderful Genesi (Genesis, in my opinion, are the two best and above all the highest expressions) in which step by step (and usually the steps are four) a sphere, maybe the ancient Borucas’ sphere, changes in a woman depicted in a squat position, repeating the miracle and the mystery of Creation; or the Poemi ancestrali (ancestral poems) or the Ricerca del mito (in search of the myth). This also explains Pierre Restany’s interest in him, a guru of the French critique who has been the prophet of other great artists such as Yves Klein, César, and Arman , and who unfortunately passed away in 2003. Deredia is not unnoticed and is characterized by a deep accuracy. “Which of my buyers do I remember with great pleasure? A woman who was not rich , and who supplemented the family income by doing housework. While she worked in our house, she saw some preparatory drawings. She asked me if she could buy a sculpture and I answer ed that it was quite expensive, maybe too much for her financial situation. She insist ed by saying that she would pay for it in monthly instal lments. I told her that she could pay me when it was more suitable for her. She never miss ed one payment and she paid off the full price. It was a lot of money for her. Now, her daughter’s restaurant is my and my wife’s favourite restaurant”. Have you ever said “no ” to a buyer? “Once, but I will never mention his name, anyway not in Europe . This buyer had purchased one of my sculptures and had seven works by Picasso and gold taps (? what is this?), but when we entered the house he told off a waiter because the corners of a napkin were up. . Later, he asked to buy other sculptures of mine, but I have never wanted to sell him any more of my work”.



This is Jorge Jiménez Deredia: a block like the marble he carves. He prefers the grey Carrara marble and he likes trying new experiments. A photo of some of his compositions made with bricks, pottery and steel became, without him knowing it, the advertising poster of the 1993 Biennale of Venice. In recent years, on top of working with marble, he particularly likes using copper. “ Lost wax-melting , like it was done in the past”. Time after time, he can be abstract and figurative. When he speaks about Pope Wojtyla, who m he met at the opening ceremony of his sculpture in San Pietro without wearing a tie (“I wore a tie every day until the age of 13, after that I never wore one again”), Deredia says that he was “a very strong presence, an incredible figure emanating great charisma. The Pope lift ed up his eyes and looked into mine. I will never forget that moment”. Deredia worked in San Pietro for a long time and no one ever asked him whether he was a believer or not. “I believe in being deeply religious and that’s all. In San Pietro there is also a sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen who was a protestant. This sculpture represents Gregorio Chiaramonti from Cesena , who became pope with the name of Pius VII, and whose arrest was ordered by Napoleon”.

Deredia is a hotbed of ideas, always searching for the deepest reasons of the origin of our presence in this world. His most recent project is something that, as always, he “feels” that he has to do. Each pre-col ombian civilization, from Canada to the most southern part of Tierra del Fuego , he explains, always had a common symbol: a sphere like the Borucas , or a circle like other populations in Central, North and South America . He intends to re-assemble these disiecta membra; having at least one effigy of these old cultures re-emerged; join ing them in that harsh-free symbol which was their own. He wants to do that through an exhibition passing simultaneously through all these countries. “An architectural or sculptural group in each of the nine countries, from Canada to the USA , and then in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina”. Even before being sure about possible funding, Deredia started to work “head first ”, as we would say for a cyclist.

 

I asked him why , and the answer was: “I am a n utopian. I must find the sense of circularity always present in men -- and the sphere is the perfect expression of world globalism, which we are experiencing now” If Deredia had a magic wand and could make only one wish, what would he choose? He reflects for a moment and then says: “certainly to carve a great quantity of sculptures -- I would not wish anything more and could do nothing else”. A real artist (and this means everything “ Art is a human activity which has as its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen ” , wrote Lev Tolstoj; “does not teach anything, but the sense of life ”, Henry Miller explained; “the only clean thing in the world, apart from sanctity” as Joris-Karl Huysmans , a French novelist of the 19 th century said) who seems to listen to a deep, remote and maybe ancestral call. To such call he answers -- for it’s a part of his integral being -- “ I know that I have been made for this, do you understand?” He has probably always been on his “Ruta de la Paz ”, more or less consciously, since he was born in Costa Rica , o r since he decided to add to his name, Jiménez, the name of the hamlet where he opened his eyes for the first time, a place named Heredia. So Jorge became the sculptor which he always dreamed of being. Now he is also famous: his works are displayed in public places in four out of the seven continents (only Africa , Australia and Antarctica are missing). “But this is something extra, unexpected; I do not work and live for this” He does it only because he feels that he must. If the concept of a vocation is accepted for priests, why not to say that Jorge Jiménez Deredia is a sculptor with a vocation? A man who is secular and religious at the same time: for the way he expresses his ideas which are not merely earthly; for the way he uses his precious materials of marble and bronze. For the way in which he knows how to live , and wants to live.


Fabio Isman


* Fabio Isman , a journalist, lives and works in Rome . He has been withIl Messaggero since 1970, where at present he works as a special correspondent. For 25 years he has written about cultural heritage both in Italy and world -wide.