20th-21st Century Spanish

Ricardo Ugarte is one of the leading exponents of the . His homeland was a powerful source of inspiration for his work, which combines the formal simplification of the sculpture by Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003) with the power of metal and the harmonious ebb and flow of the sea and the wind on the Cantabrian coast.

Born in 1942 in Pasajes, at a very young he moved with his family to San Sebastian, where he began his art career. He first studied drawing at the School of Arts and Crafts before enrolling at Academia Camps. That said, his dissatisfaction with institutional academicism led him to continue his training as a self-taught artist, initially in the field of painting before gradually expanding into sculpture, engraving, poetry and photography.

His work evolved from an initial figurative leaning towards constructivist abstraction, playing with simplified lines and with the void. This evolution gave rise to what he called rectangularismo, as formulated in the body of work of paintings and sculptures presented in 1967 in his first exhibition at Galería Barandiarán in San Sebastian. In parallel to its practical development, Ugarte presented the theory of this principle in his essay Breve apunte de una estética.

María Soledad Álvarez, Professor of the Department of Art History and Musicology at the Oviedo University, has pinpointed three key phases in Ricardo Ugarte’s sculpture: an initial period from 1967 to 1973, in which his works, still not freestanding, are defined by rectangularismo. By means of assembling rectangular modules, Ugarte explored the spatial capabilities and the temporal, light, dynamic and sound qualities of sculpture. In 1969 his sculptures began to move away from the wall, shifting from the flat module to a hollow cubic unit which has been called módulo ugartiano [Ugartean module]. The módulo ugartiano began to open up in the second period (1973-1985), which Álvarez has termed as lirismo escultórico [Sculptural Lyricism], instilling into the works a renewed cadence and a delicate undulation that gives them great visual musicality. In his final period (1985-2009), Ugarte’s visual postulates broke with the previous lyricism when he dispensed with the module and moved to a new double-T industrial steel profile that led to a simplification of the execution process. This phase is defined by greater introspection that led him to achieve maximum simplification of the material.

Underpinned by serious intellectual rigour, Ugarte’s works are the result of a wide-ranging and ongoing process of research that favours the continuous development of new formal solutions.

In 1969 he was awarded the Prize at the San Sebastian Biennial for his sculpture Estela, created by superimposing hollow cubical modules, a formula he would call módulo ugartiano [Ugartean module].

Ricardo Ugarte has made a significant input to public art and his works have been instrumental in reorganising and humanising many urban spaces, giving rise to significant exchanges and dialogues between society and art. In 1982 the artist won the Sculpture Prize at the first edition of the Gure Artea Awards, sponsored by the Basque Government. Four years later he received the Villa de Madrid National Sculpture Award.

His work may be found in the holdings of, among other institutions, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Vitoria and Museo San Telmo in San Sebastián.