Mustafa Hamed Moh Arruf (8 June 1958 â 10 February 2025) was a Spanish sculptor.
Mustafa Hamed Moh Arruf, was born in Nador, in 1958. He began his artistic studies at the School of Applied Arts and Artistic Trades in Melilla and continued his training in Fine Arts in the city of Granada (Spain). His early vocation is painting and sculpture and, although he worked with materials such as wood, stone (in Holland), and bronze, it is with this material that he best expressed his art.
In the mid 1980s, he moved to Germany, where he performed various works presented at the House of Spain in Frankfurt. After a brief residency in Holland, he moved to Madrid, in the nineties, an artistically very productive period, and worked with the MAGISA Bronze Foundry and the Art Gallery Series. Later he worked in the public program of Taller Schools and Oficio Houses, where he performed different teaching tasks, until he obtained a position as a restorer in the Archaeological Museum of the city of Melilla.
As the whole of his work, his urban sculpture âÂÂwhich is exhibited in squares, streets, avenues, parks and gardens of different countriesâ and public âÂÂwhich is exhibited in centers of different administrationsâ presents an important diversity, in which Artistic (ornamental) elements are combined with expressive (conceptual) elements.
A group of his works âÂÂpromoted by public or private institutions, and made from his beginnings as a sculptor, in 1985, until todayâ the form busts or statues of famous people born or linked to his hometown: to teaching (Juan Caro Romero, 1985), to painting (Victorio Manchón, 1994), to the letters and theatrical representation (the playwright Fernando Arrabal, 1994, the poet Miguel Fernández, 1994, and the actor and theater director Antonio César Jiménez Segura, 2007), and architecture (Enrique Nieto, 2008). Another grouping forms more avant-garde sculptures, with strong contrasts in its design: flat/ volume, soft/rough, hard/soft and, above all, diagonal/circular, with quarters of moon that makes his works contain a dynamic balance and tension.
In 1997 he won the contest that the Autonomous City of Melilla had convened for the commemoration of the V Centennial of his Spanish foundation with the work Encuentros, his most monumental and popular sculpture, although not the most successful in the opinion of its creator. A replica of half of it is in the Juan Carlos I Park, in Madrid, at the foot of which there is transcribed a sonnet by Fernando Arrabal.
Another replica of the other half is in the Park of the Three Cultures, in the city of Toledo.
The sculptor âÂÂaware that an author should not interpret his work since the composition in the art of occupying the space depends, more than in any other discipline, on the point of viewâ makes an exception here with limitations:
In 2002 he developed a group of female sculptures, promoted by the ConsejerÃÂa de Obras Públicas of Melilla, which that year had decided to allocate one percent of the budget in culture for embellishment of the city. These are works with figurative aesthetic ascription, with geometric formulation and predominance in spiral rotation.
Arruf died on 10 February 2025, at the age of 66.
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Works in public areas: