Oteiza's Selected Writings

Download or read book Oteiza's Selected Writings written by Jorge de Oteiza and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jorge Oteiza was one of the principal artists and art theorists of the twentieth century. The radical deconstructionism of his formal "disoccupations" of space, considered by many a precursor of minimalism, won his the 1957 Grand International Prize for Sculpture at the Sao Paolo Biennial, the most coveted prize for a sculptor at the time. Soon afterward, however, he concluded, "I no longer need my statues. I am no longer a sculptor." Oteiza then staged a second career as influential as the first, as an art theorist, urbanist, architech, and cultural agitator, turning into a sharmanic and controversial figure. His relentless aesthetic education of the Basques laid the culture groundwork for the building of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. A precursor of "the end of art" and the ethnographic turn, Oteiza has been heralded by Frank Gehry and Richard Serra as one of the fundamental artists of our time. He is now being honored by a series of international exhibits.