Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Sin título [Untitled]

Image caption
REMIGIO MENDIBURU

Sin título [Untitled]

  • 1980
  • Patinated bronze on a marble pedestal
  • 47 x 24 x 13 cm
  • Cat. E_54
  • Acquired in 1983
  • Observations: There is a larger copy in the Artium Collection.
By:
Beatriz Espejo

Mendiburu's work can be categorised as informalist, given his clear fondness for matter and creative arrangements based on chance, as reflected in some of his early works, which he made by throwing mud against a hard surface or the embossing of thin sheet metal with perforations and seams. After this initial stage, he began to develop his most personal work, assembling rudimentary morphologies using old craft techniques. All of his work is inspired by natural elements, as can be seen by Untitled (1978), an abstract bronze sculpture with plant and organic forms, that appears to come to life. It is part of a series of pieces deriving from Mendiburu's work with the intersections of cylindrical structures, from which these growing geometric forms emerge, which still bear the organic imprint of the material used to work the wood.

The sculpture, which rises from a white marble base, resembles the trunk of a felled tree. Mendiburu uses the casting technique to bring depth to the bronze elements that seem to be somewhat unsteadily fitted into the sculpture. In his own words, 'they are materials that no one wants, starting with old beams and forgotten tree-trunks. I have plundered old dumps where they have not yet burned the last roots of the trees ripped up to build a driveway. Often the materials are given, lent or found; that is the existential origin of my sculpture'.

To give some context to the intensity with which Mendiburu viewed the creative essence as a symbolic need between the human and the real, it is worth noting some details from his own life that forever marked his perspective. At the age of five he was suddenly and dramatically taken into exile in France as a consequence of the Spanish Civil War. He was unable to return home until he was nine years old. His childhood became an experience of death, isolation and starvation. Mendiburu, with some members of his family, managed to survive, first in concentration camps set up on French beaches and later on various derelict sites. Speaking of the impact that memory had had on his art, he said: 'My sculpture was born out of a pressing need to express myself and in some way to tell of my experience of war and exile. It was a story I had never told anyone'. The search for truth was the germ behind his many sculptures.

Beatriz Espejo

 
By:
Beatriz Espejo
Remigio Mendiburu
Hondarribia (Gipuzkoa) 1931 - Barcelona 1990

Remigio Mendiburu was a prolific artist, who was associated with the renewal of modern sculpture of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1956, he began his studies at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, but moved to the School of Sant Jordi in Barcelona shortly afterwards. There he encountered avant-garde artists and intellectuals such as Antoni Tàpies, Josep Guinovart, Joan Miró and Joan Brossa. In 1958 he travelled to Paris, motivated by an interest in informalism, which was to continue to play a major part in his work. In 1966, he joined the Gaur group, with other artists such as Amable Arias, Néstor Basterretxea, Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza. In the same year he was selected to participate at the Venice Biennale, consolidating his reputation as a sculptor. He went on to present his work in Germany, Italy and the United States. In the early 1970s, he developed his own personal construction model, consisting of accumulating and assembling often organic elements, enabling him to bring the sculpture down from its pedestal and position it in space and life. At the end of the 1970s, he took part in the First European Sculpture Triennial at the Palais Royal in Paris.

He held numerous exhibitions and made a number of pieces of public art. His most important exhibitions were the Museum of Fine Art in Vitoria-Gasteiz (1983); the San Telmo Museum (Donostia-San Sebastian, 1989); and the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts (1989). In 2012, the Oteiza Museum devoted a major exhibition to him, entitled 'Remigio Mendiburu, the Construction of Form'.

Beatriz Espejo

 
«Solidarity Art», Palau del Temple (Valencia, 1983).
Vv.Aa. Art Solidaritat, Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, 1983. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.