Basque Garden Gate

Innovation by nature: a curator’s take on ironwork in Basque Country and the Forja Artística of César Alcoz

This history of Basque Country cannot be separate from the history of iron. The Bizkaia mines produced large amounts of high-quality ore, and by the mid-nineteenth century, internationally-minded Basque families, flush with capital from their ore, formed alliances with English producers of coke—the coal-based fuel needed to heat the iron forges on a large scale. Together they literally fueled and built the industrial revolution.

When doing fieldwork on the Basque program, my co-curator Cristina Díaz-Carrera and I knew that we wanted to represent this period of the region’s history and its continued influence, financially and aesthetically, on its culture today. When I walked into César Alcoz’s workshop—full of light and ideas—I knew he had a story that resonates from his family’s and country’s history through today. If the history of Basque iron epitomizes the Festival theme Basque: Innovation by Culture, then Alcoz’s ironwork represents it on the individual, personal level. He does not just work iron, but he is an expert in this art. He is known as an escultor del hierro, a sculptor of iron.

I am particularly drawn to the fluid lines he creates in balconies and stairs. I often find the older styles harsh and impenetrable. But like his gate made during the Festival, his architectural work uses fluid lines that hold each other but are still free. Alcoz’s vision creates an unbounded space between humans and nature. The iron seems to feel it is closer to its home in and of the earth. Alcoz, too, has a natural way about him. He is modest and welcoming, yet always striving to create using the most unyielding and unending of elements—fire and iron.