The sculpture titled “Man #4,” created in 2025 by artist Cesc Abad, is a 21 x 10 x 6 cm ceramic piece currently in excellent condition. It is part of a series of male figures in which the artist displays his distinctive language of the grotesque, the humorous, and the critical.
In this work, the figure stands erect on a cylindrical base decorated in green with geometric motifs. The nude body is modeled in an expressionist style that favors the rough and visceral over the harmonious, with deliberate disproportions that imbue the figure with irony and theatricality. The chromatic details—red on the genitals and eyes, black on the pubic hair and hair—accentuate the visual power of the piece, while the body posture, with one arm flexed as if in a gesture of strength and the other at the waist, evokes a mix of cartoonish arrogance and mockery of male stereotypes.
The face, with its schematic features and circular eyes painted in red, along with the anatomical exaggeration, recalls both archaic figurations and European popular and carnival imagery. However, Abad gives the sculpture a contemporary character, laced with sarcasm, which connects with current debates about the body and identity.
The base, marked on the inside with his signature in red, reaffirms the authenticity and uniqueness of the piece within the artist’s personal universe, where each sculpture is conceived as a hybrid between the cultured and the popular, between Mediterranean ceramic tradition and expressive experimentation.
“Man #4” can be placed in dialogue with the tradition of European grotesque and satirical sculpture, from burlesque Italian terracotta to Iberian folk figures, but also with contemporary art that explores the ugly, the exaggerated, and the absurd as a vehicle for cultural and social critique.
