Sculpture is, along with architecture, painting and music one of the so-called Fine Arts, due to its inherent purpose of expressing beauty and consists of the art of molding clay, carving in stone, wood or any other material. , figures in volume. The sculptor, as the person in charge of carrying out this art is called, will express himself by creating volume as we said, but will also shape and define spaces.
By sculpture, then, it will be understood any art of carving and chisel, as well as those of casting, molding and in some corresponding cases, of pottery.
The origin of sculpture, because it is a purely human activity and art, we find it practically from the very origin of man, because man has always needed and had the opportunity to sculpt figures. Although, during this long tradition that we mention, the sculpture shows, there have been not one, but several functions that it displayed, according to the times and the stage of advance or delay in which the man was at that time.
For example, in the beginnings of humanity, most people were illiterate, therefore, sculpture was used as a vehicle to disseminate knowledge, that is, it fulfilled a strictly pedagogical mission of explaining to man some concepts or events of the most digestible and attractive way possible. This situation that we mentioned was very common in the Middle Ages, for example.
Meanwhile, the next most popularized function and that even today remains as valid as ever, is that of ornamentation or decorative sense. And finally the commercial one, but which is more modern and had to do with the conception of sculpture as a producer of works of art that have a very important monetary value.
The sculpture is divided into two large branches, the statuary and the ornamental. The first deals with the representation of the human form and expressing the different supersensible conceptions of man and the second, for its part, deals with artistically reproducing the rest of the beings that make up nature together with man, such as the vegetables and animals.
Meanwhile, the statuary comprises two types, relief and round shape. The relief is one that is made or adhered to a surface, for which it presents a single point of view that is the front. Depending on what comes out of the plane, it will be called high relief, half relief, bas relief and hollow relief. And the sculptures of round bulk are those that can be seen from any point of view and according to the part of the body represented it will be called bust, half body, three quarters, torso, among others.
