Biography

Name: Ariel Elizondo Lizarraga

Address: SAN SEBASTIAN - SAINT JEAN DE LUZ

Date of birth: 29 June 1968.

Place of birth: Brussels (Belgium)

Nationality: Spanish.

Academic studies of plastic and fine arts in Saint-Gilles (Brussels-Belgium).

Facebook: Ariel Elizondo Art

Instagram: ari_en_art

My story:

From a father from Bilbao and a mother from Tafalla (Navarre). I was born in Brussels (Belgium), where I took my academic studies in Fine Arts, due to the influence of my mother who is a painter. The years go by under a roof impregnated with culture and art, which are permanently married and accompany us in our lives.

In my youth we moved to Navarre, and there I started my family business dedicated to natural stone, creating a close relationship and knowledge of it, through trips to national and foreign quarries and a strong relationship with the world of architecture.

My speciality as an artist is mainly focused on sculpture in natural stone and steel.

This is where my intimate and close relationship with natural stone and quarries, both national and foreign, begins, imbuing me with the first inspirations in the exciting world of stone and the petrographic formation of the territories.

I travel in Spain, in the deep country, its traditions, its regions and its territories, sometimes mountainous, sometimes desert. Also the exciting trips abroad, as dangerous and adventurous as interesting, the endless and risky journeys in search of unknown, hidden and at the same time exotic stones, lost quarries, lost places and lost people, lost faces and lost looks, all this forms me and also a personal growth, in which, I navigate through the years, adventures and experiences. 

I currently live in the Basque country between San Juan de Luz and San Sebastian, in my natural stone activity, with which I am still linked. 

During my visits to my production workshop and to the quarries, I look for discarded and waste materials, or sometimes simply reused materials that come back from old works. I observe their petrographic textures, their composition, their colour, their shapes..., here begins the encounter with matter..., I open a dialogue with it, I touch it and caress it..., it transmits its energy to me and I transmit mine to it..., I ask permission (to the universe) to take it with me, .... here begins the process of inspiration .......

To sculpt, I go down to Tafalla (Navarre), to my mother's village, and there in my open-air field, as the weather allows me, I create and make my dreams and ideas come true.

All my works are folded cold, without fire or heat, with the sole force of the energy of my arms and thoughts.

In stone is mother earth, nature and creation; steel, also of mineral origin, expresses movement, us..., the exact moment in the passage of time..., and it is through its curvatures that I express our most loving moments..., fast,..., tragic or repetitive.... tragic or repetitive... and life goes on... because steel continues its journey... .... It is then that I take the sculptures to my workshop in Bera de Bidasoa (Navarra), and there I carry out the assemblies and finishes. 

Basque art, this ethnic and ancestral art, fascinates me, seeks me out. This primal art, this clash between matter and man, this contact with hands and thoughts, stone and steel, seduce me, drive me towards this world of the past, sculptors of yesteryear, our origins, our materials, our mountains, our ocean, and steel, this material of our naval industry, our sea ports, all this, guides me, leads me to find myself and to express myself towards a new artistic world that I discover through sculpture.

Art serves me as a form of personal and artistic expression, sometimes connected to the expression of my movements and physical efforts, which at the same time plunge me into a universe of well-being and freedom.

Critique:

"Ariel's life path has always been in continuous and intimate contact with natural stone, of which he is a true specialist both in its technical aspects and in its application for various professional uses. For many years he visited quarries all over the world and got to know in depth the natural formations of all types of rocks and stones, as well as the extraction, cutting and finishing processes. This rich working experience also gave him a solid knowledge of steel in a wide variety of forms and applications. During these years, his artistic vocation as a sculptor developed in parallel. In his youth he had the opportunity to study and become well acquainted with the schools of contemporary art in Belgium, but on his return to Navarre, his contact with the rich tradition of the Basque school of sculpture (Chillida, Oteiza, Mendiburu, etc.) spurred a methodical and profound investigation into the integration of both elements in a genuine and original way. Stone serves as a fundamental support, as the essence and base of the whole, whether in live rock or carved, and from it emerges steel in stylised and kinetic forms. Thus a vital dialogue takes place between the two elements: the origin and formation of nature in its primary aspect on the one hand, and on the other hand the personal development which in its lyrical or dramatic variants represents the search for an intensely personal path. The steel, always worked by hand and cold, emerges from the living stone in various forms, whether thin or thick, rusted or polished, natural or laminated in colours, and grows wavy or twisted in aesthetic adventures where stone and steel form a visual and suggestive dance to the point of the dreamlike and ineffable. Everything fits and is freely expressed in this choreography of two complementary materials, without excluding the dramatic sentiment, the heroic cry or the difficult balance of the everyday in human existence. It is an art that is not conceptual but conceptualised in vibrant symbolism and full of expressive tension. It is a modern and current art because it sinks its roots in the primary and ancestral to project itself into that uncertain future that sometimes frightens us and always challenges us, an art that with very ethnic elements manages to elevate itself to a universal language".

A. Delgado (Art critic)