Agustín Ibarrola
1930, Bilbao, Spain
Born into a family of working class roots, he was a member of the School of Arts and Crafts of Bilbao, holding his first individual exhibition in 1948. In 1956 he met in Paris those who would form part of Equipo 57. Years later, in 1961 he was a member of the Estampa Popular group, and in 1993 he received, together with the rest of the members of Equipo 57, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.
Painting is the common thread that gives meaning and union to a very great trajectory in which the theory of the interactivity of the plastic space -which refers to the known negative-positives, to the interrelation between the background and the form of Equipo 57- is the conceptual point of origin on which he builds his work. But it is the encounter of art with nature that will occupy us from the gallery.
His contribution is very valuable; he contemplates his work in open-air spaces from an anthropocentric vision whereby man becomes the fundamental reference point of the formal structure of nature. Ibarrola thus moves his laboratory, his studio outdoors, culminating his process of research and experimentation in the natural environment.
Some of his most renowned interventions are The Forest of Oma and Arteaga in Vizcaya, the concrete cubes of the port of Llanes, in Asturias, the coal hill of Prosper Haniel in Germany, the intervention in Muñogalindo, Ávila, or in Allariz, Ourense.