21. Jorge Oteiza

Back

21. Jorge Oteiza

Audioguide

Jorge Oteiza was born in 1908 in Orio (Guipúzcoa) and is one of the greatest exponents of Basque sculpture, as well as one of the most outstanding Spanish artists of the 20th century. A self-taught artist, he was initiated in the expressionism and primitivism of Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso.

In the 1950s, the decade in which he made this portrait of his friend Francisco Moreno Galván, he was researching the abstract. The sculpture was made in 1953 while Oteiza and Francisco were working together on the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Arantzazu in Oñate, Guipúzcoa, in which artists such as Eduardo Chillida, Carlos Pascual de Lara, Lucio Muñoz, and Néstor Basterretxea, among others, also participated. At this time, Oteiza stylized the figures, gave the hollow a greater expressive value and reduced the size of the heads.

He also developed a deep friendship with José María Moreno Galván. The critic wrote about the artist in Mundo Hispánico magazine:

"I know very well that I admire Jorge Oteiza more than I understand him. When I see his sculpture, an unknown impulse leads me to install in it my desire for form. I feel that I know how to inhabit it, but something tells me that I don't know its secret."