Oteiza’s Selected Writings

Joseba Zulaika, ed.
(Occasional Papers Series, 9)

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 him 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, architect, and cultural agitator, becoming a shamanic and controversial figure. His relentless aesthetic education of the Basques laid the cultural 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.

Oteiza’s Selected Writings presents portions of this theoretical work to the English-speaking world. His radical voice restores the integrity of the historical avante-garde while offering a challenging counterpoint to the neo-avante-garde movements that he anticipated.

2004, $25.95 (paper).

ISBN 978-1-877802-43-3