Max Leiva

Max Leiva’s native Guatemala is a mystical land, with impressive natural beauty and an ancient spiritual tradition. The specter of Mayan culture permeates his images and captures something of that ancient need to link the human with the divine.

Besides two years of study at the University of Silpakorn in Thailand, where he received a grant to study sculpture and bronze casting, Leiva received his training at Guatemala’s national Scholl of Fine Arts. Max also trained with one of the country’s most esteemed and celebrated sculptors, Dagoberto Vasquez. While many of his contemporaries followed international trends, Leiva has chosen a path that that builds on Guatemalan tradition and culture. He abstracts the human figure and surrounds it in a mystical or contemplative silence. He instills his monuments with humanness and magnetism, and renders them with impressive technical skill.

In 1996 the Guatemalan Olympic Committee chose Leiva to make an image for the Olympic Academy in Olympia Greece. The result is a link between sport and spirituality through the depiction of a noble Mayan ball player.

Max Leiva’s sculpture lifts the ordinary to an inspired level, and invokes viewers to consider the relationship between symbolic, visual language and divinity.

--Adapted.