Jorge Oteiza

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

Franciscan Friar

1952

patinated bronze

58 x 20 x 15 cm

Inv. no. E00001

BBVA Collection Spain



Jorge Oteiza is one of Spain’s most important artists and one of the main players in the renewal of the arts in the Basque Country. Especially worth mentioning is his contribution to the field of sculpture, focused on research into the expression of the void, which he developed both on the theoretical and practical levels. He ended up turning space into the fundamental and absolute focus of his three-dimensional work.

Franciscan Friar is closely connected with his project for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Arantzazu, one of the most important moments in his career. He was commissioned with the project in 1950 and two years later moved his studio there. During this time, he often attempted to resolve technical or expressive problems by representing people around him, including other artists working on the project, his wife or, as in this case, the monks from the monastery.

This period may be contextualised in the development of his “experimental purpose,” defined by his research into what he termed the “trans-statue”—an idea of the statue-as-energy, replacing the previous notion of sculpture-as-mass. The work carried out in Arantzazu belongs to that period. Always taking into account the requirements of the commission, Oteiza addressed those issues through figurative representation. When he created this Franciscan friar he had already amassed experiences that would prove to be crucial for the materialisation of that idea, like his study of Pre-Columbian sculpture or his discovery of the work of Henry Moore (1898-1986).

In this case, to carry out the exercise of emptying sculpture, Oteiza uses the form of a hyperboloid to synthesis the human figure. He started out from an initial piece which he takes the form of two H-shapes, a transposition of the hyperboloid, and then added limbs and clothing. The outcome is a being that seems to have been emptied of inner organs and to have shed all matter in order to imbue itself with spirit. This is how Oteiza put it: “Those who want to fill themselves with God must first empty themselves.”

As far as the technique is concerned, in his religious works he normally modelled the work in clay, a process in which he mostly used his thumbs to produce a highly expressive schematic result. He then cast those pieces in plaster, sometimes applying a dark patina to emulate a metal finish. At least ten unnumbered cast sculptures in patinated bronze were made from the original plaster for Franciscan Friar.

The model for this work was the same one as he used for the apostles in the frieze of the Sanctuary of Arantzazu. The modern conception of the project was rejected by the ecclesiastic authorities of the time and it would not be completed until nearly fifteen years later, being opened after the Second Vatican Council.