Iñigo Arregi

IÑIGO ARREGI (Arrasate-Mondragón, 1954)
Untitled. 1992.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 87 x 113 cm.; 91 x 117 x 4 cm.(frame).

Work belonging to a key stage in the career of Iñigo Arregi, a fundamental figure in the transition between painting and sculpture in the Basque artistic panorama.

In this composition from 1992, the structural thinking that would later define his sculpture can be clearly seen. The pictorial surface is organized by means of superimposed planes and intersecting lines, configuring an internal architecture of cubist and constructivist resonances. Rather than representing, Arregi "constructs" the image, assembling fragments that suggest volumes in tension and interstitial spaces. The painting thus functions as a two-dimensional laboratory where he investigates the behavior of volume on the plane.

These pictorial works directly anticipate his evolution towards monumental sculpture in corten steel and wood, a discipline in which he will achieve wide recognition, influenced by the Basque sculptural tradition and by the spatial reflection inherited from Jorge Oteiza.

Trained at the Deba Art School in the seventies, Arregi began his career intensely linked to painting, a discipline in which he already showed his concern for spatial construction and geometric analysis of form.

Currently, his pictorial and sculptural work can be found permanently at the Galería Llamas in Bilbao.

His public work includes a mural for the City Hall of Zarauz (1989), three murals projected in 1990, a Corten steel sculpture for the BAZ service of the City Hall of Mondragon (2006), a sculpture for the Eroski Headquarters in Elorrio, the monument for human rights in Iturrizar Square in Aretxabaleta, and several sculptural compositions for public parks.