SCULPTURES IN ABANDOIBARRA
DODECATHLOS (2001) Vicente Larrea (Bilbao 1934) LOCATION: Euskalduna Conference Centre CHARACTERICS: 72 tonnes of iron
Dodecathos or the Toils of Hercules by Vicente LARREA, who considered that this piece would best represent and praise the effort of the industrial workers of Greater Bilbao. Weighing 72 tonnes, this sculpture of a human torso was placed at the entrance to the Euskalduna Conference Centre in 2001. Far from the original style of its creator, the arms are held high and are full of cavities.
TERPSÍCORE (1971-2003) MUSE OF THE DANCE Salvador DALI (Catalonia 1904-1989) LOCATION: Euskalduna Conference Centre CHARACTERISTICS: over 5 metres high, approx. 2,000 kg in weight
Measuring over 5 metres high and weighing around 2,000 kg., Dali created the mould for the Muse of the Dance in 1971, which was first cast for the Bilbao exhibit. Part of the Isidro CLOT collection, it is the only one in Europe, being one of two of its kind in the world. The Provincial Government of Bizkaia acquired this piece thanks to a “donation” from Seguros Bilbao insurance company in exchange for taxes outstanding. According to Government sources, the approximate value of this transaction was 100 million pesetas (¤600,000).
A LA DERIVA (SHIPWRECKED) Jose ZUGASTI (Eibar 1952) LOCATION: Ribera Park near Euskalduna Conference Centre CHARACTERISTICS: Spatial composition based on curved, chromed steel bars, deeply inspired by industry This is a metaphor for erosion. The sculptor wants to pay homage to the shipbuilding and metal industry of the past. The Euskalduna Conference Centre does just that, symbolising the industrial past, its more or less splendorous beginning, its decadence and final days beside the Nervion-Ibaizabal River. Transparent and looking toward the River, the Promenade, and the splendid iron faรงade of the Conference Centre, Shipwrecked finds its instability and existential weight are supported. It aspires to be part of that memory, an aesthetic body from an epoch gone by. Its struggle to stay alive, progressive erosion and final days next to the River that witnessed its birth, this work remains a metaphor of an industrial age. Constructed of 42 mm compact iron hoops, these designs in the air give us the sensation of falling with a loud crash from a height of 5 metres.
SITIOS Y LUGARES (SITES AND PLACES) (2002) Angel GARRAZA (Allo, Navarre 1950) LOCATION: Ribera Park CHARACTERISTICS: Concrete tiles with ceramic tiles and 100 tonnes in weight
Sites and Places is composed of two compact concrete and ceramic tiles. One rests horizontally and the other one appears as though it had been knocked down. The artist offers physical and anthropological relationships with the environment through the shape of the traditional Basque kaiku, wooden receptacles that were used to boil milk or make cheese. The familiar kaiku shapes are found to be close to the observer's experience. Transformed and enlarged, the capacity as container or receptacle has been eliminated. The repetitive circular modules on the skin-like surface strengthen the perception of powerful and pregnant shapes.
UNTITLED (2002) Ulrich RĂœCKRIEM (Germany 1938) Location: Churruca Pier, Ribera Park Characteristics: 4 square metres of Bleu de Vire granite
This structure is not a sole element, nor merely an object, but rather it leads to repetition, proposing a journey through its various elements. Its minimalist aesthetic, where less means more, intends to offer simple shapes and geometric volumes. Constructed of granite slabs, its smoothly polished sides and rough, uneven flat top is reminiscent of an organic landscape. The other elements are distant and aligned but hardly distinguishable because they form part of the pavement. In order to discover what game the artist is suggesting, we follow the imaginary bread crumbs on the ground, continuing along the pavement tiles. The first is just a plain surface square that is later divided and the next one in turn, until the last one has ten parts. The end result of the trajectory offers many natural geometric and functional suggestions for arranging space.
MAIA (2002) WILLIAM TUCKER (U.K. 1935) LOCATION: between Deusto Bridge and Father Arrupe Pedrestrian Bridge CHARACTERISTICS:Bronze piece and 3.5 tonnes in weight Weighing 3,500 kg, this three metre high bronze structure is not a sole element, nor merely an object, but rather it leads to roaming, proposing a journey through its various elements. Its minimalist aesthetic, where less means more, attempts to offer simple shapes and geometric volumes. Maia, the name of the god Brahma, evokes a pregnant woman emerging from the earth. This biomorphic volume evinces the mobility of awakening by means of an uneven surface full of bulges and changes.
JUDITH (2000) MARKUS LĂœPERTZ (GERMANY 1941) LOCATION: Ribera Park, in front of the library CHARACTERISTICS: 1,500 kilos of modelled bronze
When speaking about this work, the sculptor Markus LĂźpertz calls his Judith a Baroque piece. The Jewish heroine has a complicated story. With the help of a maid-servant, she seduced the Assyrian general Holofernes and beheaded him. As the myth has it, when displayed, the sight of the head made the enemy army flee in fear, thus saving the people of Bethulia. Made from modelled bronze and located in Ribera Park since 2003, this three metre high, 1,500 kg structure is direct and impassioned. The face stands out from the rest of the sculpture. The expressionist sculptor, who knows Bilbao well, also has work on exhibit at the nearby Fine Arts Museum.
BEGIRARI IV (THE GUARDIAN IV) (1997, installed in 2003) Eduardo CHILLIDA (Donostia 1924-2002) LOCATION: Father Arrupe Pedrestrian Bridge CHARACTERISTICS: Corten steel. Height: 7.1 metres Almost like a watchful lighthouse, this vertical work stands like a totem pole. The corten steel structure goes from narrow at the bottom to wide at the top, where there is a hollow, giving the appearance of a gigantic Cyclops who keeps a watchful eye on the place.
EXPLORER'S BOOK SIR ANTHONY CARO (LONDON, 1924) LOCATION: Next to Pedro Arrupe Pedrestrian Bridge CHARACTERISTICS: steel and concrete MEASUREMENTS: 1.63 x 1.9 x 2.05 metres
Located on the Pedro Arrupe Pedestrian Bridge, this steel and concrete piece reminds us of an open book. Composed of leftover parts from steel ship anchors, the artist expresses his personal grammar, which is somewhere between figurative and abstract. Part of a plan to acquire sculptures to enhance this promenade along what used to be the old docks and piers of the Port of Bilbao; this area has been recently converted into a leisure and recreation area for the residents of the city to enjoy. Sir Anthony CARO is considered one of the renovators of English contemporary sculpture and one of the most significant abstract sculptors of today. He is a member of the Academies of Fine arts in London, Berlin and Milan. He has been professor at St. Martin's School of Art, London where he has had great influence on at least two generations of artists.
PUPPY 1992
JEFF KOONS ( York, Pennsylvania, 1996.) LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Stainless steel, soil and flowering plants 1240 x 830 x 910 cm On permanent display outside the museum, Puppy by Jeff Koons engages past and present. This 12-foot flowered sculpture, formed from a stainless-steel structure and designed with sophisticated computer modeling, references 18thcentury formal gardens. A West Highland terrier-originally a carved wooden sculpture-Puppy combines the most saccharine of iconography-flowers and puppies-in a monument to the sentimental.
TULIPS 1995-2004 JEFF KOONS (York, Pensilvania, 1955) LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: High chrome content stainless steel sculpture 203 x 460 x 520 cm Tulips, is an enormous polychrome structure in transparent colour-coated chrome stainless steel portraying a bouquet of seven tulips measuring approximately five metres to form an artwork of 203 x 460 x 520 cm. The tulips are conceived like enormous luminescent coloured balloons, transmitting a feeling of weightlessness contrasting with the heavy material of their construction to increase the irony of the piece. Their artificial appearance is the perfect reflection of the subject approached by Jeff Koons in his Celebration series and other sculptures like Balloon Dog and Moon.
TALL TREE & THE EYE. 2009 ANISH KAPOOR (Bombay, India 1954) LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Stainless steel spheres
Positioned in front of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao at the North Pond adjoining the Nervion River, is the luminous work Tall Tree & the Eye (2009). Consisting of almost 80 stainless steel spheres, Tall Tree & the Eye multiplies its surroundings producing reflections that are fractal. Each sphere reflects not just itself and its neighbors but merges into its positioned landscape, reflecting the Museum’s silhouette and the architecture surrounding the piece in an endless process. The angle of the images changes as the viewer’'D5s gaze climbs up the sculpture. Thus, the artist expresses the transient nature of how things appear and through a complex use of light and shadows, of volume and space, makes us contemplate the instability of the visible world, bringing sky and clouds down to earth.
FIRE FOUNTAIN 1961 Yves Klein (Nice, France, 1928 - ParĂs, LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Fire. Site specific dimensions
Consisting of five separate fountains pouring fire into the sky, and envisaged for an open public space, Fire Fountain (1960-61), by French artist Yves Klein, is the most ambitious of his fire pieces and existed only in sketches before its fabrication for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The artist's use of fire as a medium extended in form at Krefeld, Germany, during his 1961 retrospective, to his fire drawings and fire paintings, as well as his projects for an architecture of air, fire, and water, elements that were to provide the walls of his proposed utopian communities.
FOG SCULPTURE. 1998 # 08025 (F.O.G.) FUJIKO NAKAYA (Sapporo, Japan, 1933) LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Water-fog generated by 1,000 fog nozzles and high-pressure pump/motor system. Site specific dimensions. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg. With the ephemeral quality of her installations, Fujiko Nakaya (b. 1933, Sapporo, Japan) has been experimenting with the artistic potential of artificially produced water-fog in environmental pieces since 1970s. Initial development for her fog installations was provided by Experiments in Art and Technology, a New Yorkbased organization for promoting artistic and technological collaborations founded by artist Robert Rauschenberg and engineer Billy Kluver. Her installation Fog Sculpture # 08025 (F.O.G.) (1998), specially commissioned for the water-garden area of the back of the building, is an atmospheric sculpture shaped instantaneously by the environment where it is created.
MAMAN 1999 (Cast 2001) LOUISE BOURGEOIS (Paris, 1911, New York, 2010) UBICACIĂ“N: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Bronze, stainless steel and marble. 895 x 980 x 1160 cm. Over a career that spans more than six decades, Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris) has created a rich and ever-evolving body of work that oscillates between abstraction and the visceral representation of psychic states. Part of her recent Spider series, the graceful, bronze Maman (1999), installed behind the building, addresses the duplicitous nature of maternity; the silk of a spider is used both to construct cocoons and to bind prey. Bourgeois explores the complexity of the human mind, publicly exorcising her emotional demons and poetically re-creating childhood associations in the form of a gigantic insect.
ARCOS ROJOS / ARKU GORRIAK 2007 DANIEL BUREN (Boulougne-Billancourt, Francia, 1938) LOCATED: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa CHARACTERISTICS: Compact laminate sheets, aluminum, galvanized steel, PVC film, clear plexiglas, LEDs and Metal Halide Projectors Modified structure dimensions 57,5 x 27,85 x 2,17 m Daniel Buren decided to make the structure of the La Salve Bridge less brutal, but more visible. With this in mind, he designed a vertical piece perpendicular to the bridge, out of which he cut three circles located at equal distances from each other. This work will be inaugurated on the occasion of the Museum’s 10th anniversary. It will create a central circle around the road, in addition to two semicircles that will also be reflected on the water and in the air. The surface is red in color, while the outer edges of the piece and the inside of the arches are vertically striped in black and white. The borders are made of a translucent material that makes it possible to add plays of light at night. The artist has taken into account the different properties of the context in order to create this work. The first of these is the fact that the site is located at the immediate entrance to the city center, a function that is effectively performed by the central circle. The second is the presence of the museum, with an architecture that combines curved and vertical shapes. The outer edges of the structure produce verticality, while the circles provide curves.The third is the presence of titanium, which produces a mirror-like effect. The red color was therefore chosen to contrast with the green of the bridge, and to add an additional colored reflection on the titanium. The fourth is the presence of the estuary, which reflects Buren’s work and can seemingly lengthen it. The fifth and final element are the cars traveling across the bridge, which produce a horizontal play of light. The artist will install vertical plays of light on the inner and outer edges in order to create a dialog with those caused by the cars.
LA PUERTA DE LOS HONORABLES MONUMENTO A RUBIAL (THE DOOR OF THE HONOURABLE MONUMENT TO RUBIAL) (2000-2001) CASTO SOLANO (ALAVA 1958) LOCATION: La Campa de los ingleses Park CHARACTERISTICS: Bronze and iron
This is a dual monument to the Spanish socialist politician, Ramon RUBIAL. The preliminary sketch was presented in the year 2000 and this scultpure was inaugurated in 2001. Composed in bronze, the realistic, full body figure appears to be moving forward with its hands in its pockets. The figure is moving towards the so-called Door of the Honourable, a prism shaped iron block which magnifies the perspective of the politician by using a large empty space inside the prism.
MUSA (MUSE) (1948) ENRIQUE BARROS (1905-1990) LOCATION: Uribitarte CHARACTERISTICS: Limestone
This work was intended to substitute an allegoric nude sculpture that scandalised society of the period following the Spanish Civil War. From 1948 to 1975 Musa stood on a pedestal, as arranged by sculptor Paco DURRIO in homage to the Basque musician, Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga. It has since been exhibited in a number of places: next to the pond in Do単a Casilda Park and, since 1985, in the Casilla Gardens. In the year 2000, it was relocated to Uribitate Avenue where it has been ever since.