Iñaki OLAZABAL

Andoain 1959

Zinc is a metal with a cold aspect, strange, stern, inalterable and on the whole not conducive to artistic creation. As a prowess or a dream of lightness, the sculptor Iñaki Olazabal decided one day to link and constrain his career to this material. He had discovered zinc fortuitously looking at the traditional zinc/plated roofs of Paris. From his workshop in Zumaia, the artist cuts, assembles and solders zinc boards which become following his inspiration Sanctuary, Mask, Watcher or Maternity.

His sculptures with geometrical shapes, bare, halfway between Arte Povera and lyrical expressionism, evoke nature, spirituality or man, and send us back to the sentimentality of our look, between certainty and anxiety, happiness or sadness.

The metallic surface of these rough, minimalist works which is intensified by the soldering and the patina caused by acid, shows, unconsciously maybe, traces of suffering which have marked the life of the artist.

Timeless monuments or modern megaliths, the works of Olazabal, with a strong personality, inspire through their enigmatic presence an emotional reaction suggesting the most poetic dimension in the contemporary Basque sculpture, inherited from the group GAUR.

       

 

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