San José · Costa Rica

Sandra Rubinstein Winer

About the artist

Sandra Rubinstein Winer was born in San José, Costa Rica, where she currently lives and works. She graduated in Graphic Arts, studied Photography, Marketing and Business Administration. In addition to working in commercial and business areas, she served as a professor of Graphic Design at VERITAS University. She perfected her knowledge in the art of sculpture with important masters from the country and abroad such as Manuel Vargas and Alexy Palenzuela Ramos.

The great sensitivity that she has for her Art has led her to collaborate with many painters and sculptors from Costa Rica, with the sole purpose of spreading Costa Rican work and talent internationally. After venturing into different branches of Art such as drawing, painting, engraving and photography, her artistic restlessness and creative energy led her to experience new forms and emotions in Sculpture. She took bronze as her working material and in its hardness and ductility, she found a representative medium of freedom and sensitivity. The female body is fully discovered in the search for her interiority and could be interpreted as an escape from her ancient chains or as an expression of strength and power in her femininity.

Most of her works are born from the alloys that make up bronze and produce that sensory aesthetic impact, although she has experimented with other techniques, as can be seen in some of her sculptures. In the construction of three-dimensional art, her work stands out for representing the human body with an unprecedented proposal, simplifying it, but at the same time proposing it within its own contemporary realism.

Her works have been exhibited in numerous collective exhibitions with Latin American artists and artists from other origins, in individual exhibitions and some belong to important private collections in Costa Rica, Argentina, Venezuela, the United States and Israel.

As a businesswoman with a long career, she has worked in different fields where we can highlight ten years in charge of an advertising agency. In addition, for more than twenty-three years she was in charge of five international fast food franchises in Costa Rica. She has also worked in food and beverage import and distribution companies, the automotive sector, and logistics. She is currently the Vice President of the AGE Holding Business Group. Every time she gets closer to her artistic facet, moving away from her intense business life.

Reflective statement

Creation is the work of a Superior Being, the artist simply develops, transforms matter, composes and decomposes, to achieve a work that speaks for itself and transmits a message that is not expressed with the voice.

In the search for my artistic path, I found sculptural modeling with which adding or subtracting proportions from a block, from a shapeless material, with my hands, imagination and creativity, I have managed to build volumes and shape spaces, until I have achieved a three-dimensional shape. that communicates that contained message to the viewer.

The most important legacy that my parents left me was the importance of values, balance and balance that must exist in each of the actions and ways of acting as human beings. This heritage was the source of inspiration for my works in which metaphor is used as a symbolic element and is transmitted in a powerful way in the three-dimensional and solid object that is sculpture. Life is full of extremes that determine important changes. It is, however, the midpoint of balance that leads to truth and transcends over time as an expression of art.

My work has women as its symbolic axis. They are globalized, empowered women who can represent any race, origin or creed. It is the core of the feminine that aims to show the coexistence and elimination of the contradiction between intellectual capacity and the perennial struggle to which women are subjected, with femininity, corporeal beauty and sensuality. Although it seems contradictory, I intend to show the coexistence of both facets through my work.

Comments on the artist

“It’s had always been said that painters are of the air and sculptures are of the earth. Sandra Rubinstein blends the ethereal concepts of both into her timeless bronze sculptures this process started when she was a little girl, looking for a medium in which to express her feelings and emotions. The artist as a child experimented with virtually every kind of medium from water colors to oil paints. The artist was always a seeker trying to find the perfect voice for her feelings, while participating and exploring all kinds of art the one true medium allude it her, after university Rubinstein devoted her time to racing her family and building along with her husband a very successful business in Costa Rica. The longing and need for her artistic expression grew more intensely as she mature as a woman, in 2005 Rubinstein started experimenting with sculptures working and play she could create the images that express her feelings as a woman, an artist, a mother and grandmother, however she knew she had to employ a substance that it was permanent so that these work of art would endure for eternity. With that in mind the artist started exploring bronze, the idea of casting her work in bronze led her to an exploration of such classic artist as Juan de Bolonia to more contemporary artist as Paul Manship, Romain de Tirtoff (Erte). Having experimenting with multiple images and subject matters the artist decided to express her feelings through the female body and to celebrate the joy and beauty of women through her work. Rubinstein has developed a somewhat stylishly image of women that she uses repeatedly in her work which expresses her idea of perfection, which is very feminine and very powerful. She has worked with many important sculptors including, Manuel Vargas and Alexy Palenzuela Ramos. Her work is incredibly powerful, and grounded to the earth while expressing a feeling of ethereal elegance.”
Gilbert Carmichael M.F.A. International Fine Art CR

“When I met Sandra Rubinstein's "divine women" I was shocked. Who knows the sculptress knows her mettle and determination, her restless spirit, always looking for new challenges, her imposition for excellence, search for beauty and balance. However, her sculptural proposal goes beyond adjectives to discover herself in the artistic domain, balance, the music of the muses, the harmony of the body, the flight towards infinity. In her work the balance of pain, joy, lightness is reflected, to achieve the solitary Peace of the spirit. Welcome Sandra to the list of our national artists who delight our spirit and fill us with pride.”
Aida Faingezicht de Fishman Former Minister of Culture, Former Minister of Tourism and Journalist.

“Sandra Rubinstein's sculptural work transmits a magical idealism that she has achieved by synthesizing shapes and stripping away everything superfluous, using black patinas as a source of sobriety. Around his work, there are elements that make a parenthesis and symbols, creating a catharsis in the work, where a syncretism between the object and the viewer.”
Alexy Palenzuela Ramos Sculptor

“Elegance, Geometry and Sinuosity are some of the synonyms that can be attributed to the sculptures of Sandra Rubinstein. Extraordinary is her talent, of the kind that cannot be transmitted by anyone but is immanent in the delicate and tenacious soul of the Artist, who is able to introduce in the existing things the seductive forms of female bodies. These ones cross sublime geometric structures in an ethereal dance, almost in an attempt to confuse and persuade the delicate lines of the smooth bronze body that dominates and devotes every attention to itself. Sandra possesses the culture of the World and of the Existence that shapes to give rise to a new and original identification of a work of art of her and our age, in order to witness the beauty and intuition that cannot be confused between noises and indifference. The language of bronze is a silent and immortal language, which in the bronzes of Riace leads us to their own era. In a similar way, with an extreme and sensitive ability, Sandra, a person with a gentle and elegant temperament, manages to excite the viewers of her works by offering humanity a contribution that elevates us all.”
PhD. Daniela Accorsi International Art Curator President of AccorsiArte Gallery Turin and Venice Italy