Curators: Sergio Rubira, Mikel Onandia and Rocío Robles Tardío

Stemming from a statement by Jorge Oteiza published in Quousque Tandem…! (1963): “We, who have neither a place of convergence nor a simple place to meet and think, cannot speak of research”, the exhibition addresses this call to action to create meeting places that can enable the socio-political, cultural and intellectual training and growth of boys and girls, men and women in the Basque Country. The exhibition recalls and brings together a series of projects with an educational vocation, whether collective or individual in nature, developed between 1957 and 1979 and sharing the same argument of necessity indicated by Oteiza.

The time span begins in a year that saw the convergence of various initiatives and programmes in and outside the Basque Country, and it coincides with the moment when Jorge Oteiza abandoned his process of sculptural experimentation to focus on considering the social and political role of the artist (1957-1959). It extends to the year in which the Bilbao Superior School of Fine Arts entered a new stage as a Faculty, a conversion in which the factor of its name contained the promise of a substantial transformation of its structure, programme, facilities and teaching renewal.

Between the two years, a number of diverse proposals are presented in terms of their statements and modes of articulation, developed in years marked by processes of renewing and reconstructing Basque society, and whose common denominator was not to follow a formal or official education, thereby indicating that each activated “place to think” became a space of possibilities.

Brochure (pdf, Spanish) 

Catalogue

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Artium Museoa and the Jorge Oteiza Museum Foundation

Image: Mikel Mendizabal. Students from the ikastola in Errenteria participating in a plastic arts expression exercise, ca. 1980.