AgustÃn Ibarrola
Agustín Ibarrola Goicoechea ( born August 18, 1930 in Basauri, Vizcaya ) is a Basque artist. Besides Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza he is one of the most important Basque- Spanish sculptors.
Life
Goicoechea started with 16 years as an autodidact. At age 18 he received a scholarship, with whose help he was able to study in Madrid with the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz and discovered Cubism in itself. During an extended stay in Paris, he turned in the context of the artist group " Equipo 57 ", the constructivism. After returning to Spain, he became involved in the (forbidden by General Francisco Franco) Communist Party of Spain and was repeatedly imprisoned for this political activity. In 1964 his paintings were exhibited in London, where he was compared to the Goya of the " horrors of war ". In the 1980s, he retired to his farm near Gernika and began to concentrate on the production of sculptures.
Works
Among his most famous designs as a sculptor belongs to the Painted Forest. At first he painted living trees in the forest of Oma near his residence. Later he created in Salamanca, together with students from the local art school by painting withered elm the Enchanted Forest, and soon the forest of totems ( in a train station in Madrid). Other examples of large-scale sculptures of Ibarrola are his Cubes of Memory in the port of Llanes and its made from one hundred railway sleepers installation Totems on the heap Haniel in the Ruhr. Ibarrola has a critical look since the 1990s, with the terrorism of ETA, including as co-founder of the movement ¡ Basta Ya! ( That's enough ). In 1993 there were attacks by ETA supporters on its forest of Oma, where the bark has been damaged by about 100 trees.