Jorge Oteiza

(Orio, Guipuzcoa, 1908 – San Sebastian, 2003)

Author's artworks

20th-21st Century Spanish

Jorge Oteiza began his career as a sculptor in the late 1920s. In 1927 his family moved to Madrid, where, after abandoning his initial studies in Medicine, he enrolled at the School of Arts and Crafts, which he also abandoned a few months later. He then became interested in the avant-garde movements and the work of artists like Alberto Sánchez (1895-1962), with whom he shared similar artistic and political viewpoints.

In 1935 Oteiza moved to South America, where he focused on his creative output, mostly in writing and sculpture, and began to form his own aesthetic philosophy. He lived and worked for more than a decade in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, where he involved himself with local intellectual circles. He studied Pre-Columbian statuary, imparted his first lectures, published his first writings and began to teach ceramics.

In 1948 Oteiza returned to Spain. Worth highlighting from this period is his work in the decoration of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Arantzazu, an ambitious project involving many artists which became an outlet for experimentation for Basque art. And this was precisely one of Oteiza’s main concerns: to create links in search of innovation and the integration of the arts. Equally noteworthy is his role in forming the group
and the foundation of the
, remaining a member of this movement’s section in Guipuzcoa, known as the
, until its disbandment.

On his return to Spain, Oteiza increased his activity and participation in exhibitions and competitions. He garnered widespread recognition in Spain and abroad, with his growing success being further consolidated after winning the Grand International Sculpture Prize at the 4th Sao Paulo Art Biennial in 1957. Two years later he concluded his experimentation with the void in sculpture and announced that he was giving up the discipline. However, despite his avowal, he continued practicing sculpture occasionally and in 1972 he fully embraced it again. That same year he took part in the
and moved to Alzuza (Navarre) in search of the isolation that would allow him to concentrate on his studio work. His visual research from that period largely consists in the development of what he called “chalk laboratory.”

Particularly salient among his many writings is his essay from 1963 called Quousque tandem...!, an aesthetical interpretation of the Basque soul in which he analyses the languages and expressions that shaped the region’s art and culture since prehistory.

Oteiza. Propósito experimental, the first major survey exhibition dedicated to the artist was held in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona in 1988, curated by his fellow Basque sculptor Txomin Badiola (1957), with whom Oteiza had a close relationship and who would oversee his catalogue raisonné.

His highly influential career was distinguished on numerous occasions with major prizes such as the Gold Medal in Fine Arts in 1985; the Príncipe de Asturias Award for the Arts in 1985; the Pevsner Prize in 1996; the Medal of Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid; the 1998 Guipuzcoa Gold Medal; and the Lan Onari Medal in 2000. Furthermore, in 1998 he was conferred with a honoris causa doctorate degree by the University of the Basque Country.

Disappointed with the institutional cultural policies in the Basque Country, Oteiza donated his estate to Navarre, where the artist’s legacy is preserved in Alzuza. The building, one of the final works by the architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza (1918-​2000), with whom Oteiza had already worked in Arantzazu, includes the artist’s home-studio. That was the seed for the Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza, which opened in 2003, a month after Oteiza’s death.