Tomás Lara: art is a vital necessity

For almost four decades, his life has been confined to art. He not only thinks and lives as an artist, but also watches over his colleagues as the president of the Advisory Council for the Development of Monumental Sculptures (Codema). The problems and dreams of other sculptors are added to his. This is how days go by in Tomás Vicente Lara Franquis´s life (Villa Clara, 1957): a life marked by worries and desires.

He graduated from the National School of Fine Arts “San Alejandro” and the University of the Arts in the specialty of sculpture. He is also a painter and a teacher of these schools.

In his works, there is almost always a dominant element and a dominated one: one is a winner, the other one is defeated. Like any installation work, they have the possibility of being reinstalled in spaces, acquiring the ability to reinvent themselves. Lara seeks to establish a controversial dialogue between two differentiated material natures and perhaps his entire artistic universe could be summarized to that obsession: the principle of the struggle of opposites. He resorts to dissimilar elements, among them the organic ones - wood, stone, marbles - and the metallic ones related to the technological-industrial development.