Heavy in Bilbao
11 December 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
These days Bilbao’s art fame rests mainly on Frank Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim, finished with 33,000 titanium sheets and containing eight of Richard Serra’s massive works from the series Torqued Ellipses, 1996-98. Gehry and Serra fit with a – rather macho – tradition of working sculpturally in heavy materials consistent with the Basque region’s industrial base. Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) and Jorge Otieza (1908 –2003) are the most famous Basque artists of the 20th century, but I found contemporary practitioners, too, on a recent visit.
