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The
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will open the most extensive
retrospective devoted to the work of Jorge Oteiza
in the last fifteen years. Oteiza is unquestionably
one of the leading Basque artists of the 20th century.
Winner of the most prestigious international award
for sculpture at the 1957 Sao Paulo Biennial, he has
had a huge influence on later generations of Basque
and Spanish artists, despite exhibitions of his work
being few and far between. Open to the public from
October 8, 2004 to January 9, 2005, the exhibition
has been made possible by the generous support of
Iberdrola, which has worked with the Museum since
it opened in 1997.
Oteiza:
Myth and Modernism is curated by Margit Rowell, prestigious
curator of modern and contemporary art, who has worked
at such important institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, the Musée National d’Art Moderne
Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art
in New York and the Fundación Joan Miró
in Barcelona, and co-curated by Basque artist Txomin
Badiola, the leading expert of the sculptor’s
work.
Highly
personal, and quite unlike the work of any other artist
of his generation, the art of Jorge Oteiza is difficult
to define. Although, in retrospect, his later periods
can be related, not unreasonably, to American Minimalism—a
movement that appeared after the Basque artist’s
creative career had effectively finished—, Oteiza’s
sculptures are rooted in the avant-garde movements
of the early 20th century, Cubism, Expressionism,
Surrealism and Neoplasticism and constructivism in
particular. What Oteiza shares to a great extent with
other artists of the postwar period is a special sensitivity
that may be defined as abstract, spiritual, and humanist.
Organized
to follow his experimental progress and capture the
artist’s formal and conceptual evolution, Oteiza:
Myth and Modernism fills four uniquely shaped galleries
on the third floor of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
with some 140 sculptures borrowed from museums and
private collections. The exhibition also presents
43 drawings and collages from the Jorge Oteiza Foundation
Museum and shown here in public for the first time.
To mark this retrospective, the Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao is publishing a catalogue illustrating all
the works displayed, and with essays by Margit Rowell,
Francisco Calvo-Serraller, Joseba Zulaika and Amador
Vega. It also includes a short note on Oteiza’s
work by Richard Serra, and introductions to the catalogue
sections by Txomin Badiola and an extensive biography.
Exhibition
organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao with the
collaboration of the Museo Nacional
Would
you write your opinion ?
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Construcción
vacía, 1957.
De la serie de la desocupación de la esfera, 1957
La
tierra y la luna, 1955.
Tú eres Pedro, 1956-57.
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