Néstor Basterretxea and the image

This special programme provides an audiovisual approach through five films to the multidisciplinary artist Nestor Basterretxea (Bermeo, 1924 - Hondarribia, 2014), a driving force behind new plastic and visual languages in the second half of the 20th century. Organised jointly by the Punto de Vista Festival and the Oteiza Museum, this session features on his centenary programme and includes a set of experimental pieces by the artist, alongside others that revisit his plastic and visual imagination.

The session begins with Alquézar. Retablo de Pasión, directed by Nestor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert in 1966, which provides an expressionist approach to the aesthetic and the forms of the period’s religious tradition. Using a tenebrist approach, a syncopated montage accentuates the chiaroscuro aesthetic and echoes Val del Omar. Its singularity revolves around the visual plasticity of its images, defining a particular way of approaching a secular expression that dates back to past times.

The industrialist Juan Huarte commissioned Jorge Oteiza and Nestor Basterretxea to make a documentary short film on the products and production processes of companies in the Huarte group. Originally intended for advertising and promotion, this finally became Operación H, a piece of audiovisual experimentation directed by Basterretxea in 1963. Its play and visual counterpoints, interaction with music composed by Luis de Pablo and radical editing emphasise an unusual constructivist aesthetic in the audiovisual panorama of that time.

Among the many recordings made by Basterretxea throughout his life, one untitled experimental work stands out, shot in 16 mm. In this piece with no sound, he pans over different photographs from illustrated magazines and incorporates some collages he is making. His fascination with images and his capacity for evocation are clear in this short film that directly expresses a particular way of understanding the structure of the visual aspect.

Un retrato de NB, by Peio Aguirre, provides a vital look at Nestor Basterretxea using original material from his photo archive. Working from fixed images, the gaze of this documentary recreates past times and an imprint of what was lost, implicit in any retrospective approach. As a personal although also generational and artistic portrait, it also critically explores the legacy of artists from a period marked by idealism and a conviction in the transforming power of art and culture.

In LABO, Jesús Mari Palacios explores the memory of the former Universidad Laboral in Tarragona, developed as an educational model for Franco’s social and political regime. By combining images from the time and current records of architecture and plastic expressions produced by different artists, including Basterretxea, this short film makes it possible to reflect on political appropriation of artistic expressions and provides an approach to these spaces used for training and propaganda, of which only “the silent and motionless stone, a silent witness of another time” now remains.

Juan Pablo Huércanos, Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza