In a world where art often shouts for attention, Eudald de Juana whispers — and still manages to stop you in your tracks. His sculptures don’t merely exist; they remember. They pulse with something rare in the age of speed: time, care, and the quiet thrill of touch. Born into a family of sculptors in a small Catalan town near Girona, de Juana didn’t so much choose sculpture as grow up within it, like a tree bending toward sunlight.

Now one of the most promising voices in contemporary figurative sculpture, de Juana has refined his craft across borders and decades, fusing academic discipline with imagination, and creating pieces that are as intimate as they are monumental.

Touch as Revelation: The Alchemy of Clay

My favorite part is when I start touching the clay — it’s pure pleasure.

– de Juana confesses.

That initial contact between skin and medium is not a technical phase — it’s the ignition point. His sculptures emerge from this tactile communion, where human form and emotional subtext are kneaded together into mythic presence.

There’s something almost sacramental in his process. Educated in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and later at the Florence Academy of Art — a crucible for classical rigor — de Juana chose to train his hand in representational tradition, not to replicate the past but to use it as a scaffold for storytelling.

We are biologically made to feel attracted to what is similar to us, a representative art piece becomes a mirror to the observer.

– He explains.

The Sculpture That Stares Back

De Juana’s works aren’t static relics on plinths; they are vessels of memory, positioned halfway between dream and witness. Emotion and motion ripple through his clay and bronze figures — a twist of the torso, the press of lips, the hollow of a gaze — each detail calibrated to connect with the viewer’s subconscious. He makes the intangible visible, and the abstract unbearably human.

His 2023 piece Memòria, installed in Figueres, is more than just a monument to the Spanish Civil War. It’s a rupture. A wound. A tender, brutal sculpture that asks viewers not just to look, but to remember. You don’t observe Memòria so much as endure it. That’s the mark de Juana aims for — not spectacle, but sear.

Between Realism and Reverie: A Style that Breathes

To call de Juana a realist feels insufficient. His sculptures exist in a liminal space, where human anatomy flirts with fantasy, and where detail is both anchor and invitation. He is part of a lineage — one that stretches from Rodin to Camille Claudel, from the romantic turbulence of the 19th century to the conceptual questions of the 21st. Yet, what sets him apart is his refusal to treat technique as the endpoint. Realism is merely the language; the story is always more surreal.

He often photographs his finished sculptures in abandoned or outdoor environments — an intuitive act that layers new narratives onto each piece. The backdrop becomes a second skin.

The placement of an artwork in different environments gives it a new meaning, It can surprise even me.

– He says.

From Studio to Monument: A Young Master in Motion

At just 35, de Juana has already placed his works in private collections across the globe — from the U.S. to Hong Kong — and his public commissions include figures like composer Manuel Blancafort and writer Carles Rahola. His piece Ritorno in Aria, haunting the Monumental Cemetery of Milan since 2021, is a meditation on flight, loss, and the intangible arc between presence and absence.

And then there’s his teaching — first as a principal instructor at the Florence Academy, then as founder of Geode Art Space in his hometown of Navata. It’s here, surrounded by nature and silence, that de Juana continues shaping not only form but future — mentoring new artists, championing the tactile over the digital, and honoring the slow, deliberate making of meaning.

A Mind Made of Marble, A Heart of Fire

What de Juana understands — and what many in contemporary sculpture forget — is that material alone is never enough. Art must move. It must resonate in that thin membrane between intellect and nerve. His works don’t scream, but they insist — on humanity, on vulnerability, on the radiant imperfections of being alive.

For those disillusioned by the market gloss of contemporary art, de Juana offers something tactile, rooted, and revelatory. His sculptures don’t need a press release to explain them. They need time. Space. And the willingness to feel.

And perhaps, as he suggests, that’s all happiness is: a visual input that settles into the soul and stirs something ancient awake.