BIOGRAPHY
Born in Zumarraga, Spain, 1968. He graduated in Economics from the University of Kentucky (USA) and received a masters degree from IE Business School in Madrid.
He has developed his professional career in four large companies occupying different positions of responsibility.
The last thirty years he has lived in Madrid with his wife, Patricia, and their children Lorea and Asier. Over the years he has traveled the five continents, with his eyes as wide as possible, learning to look.
He comes to art through twelve years of long conversations with the painter and poet Manuel Padorno, who introduces with detail and care not only the approach to painting and literature, but also to sculpture and architecture. The work of Malevich, Rothko, Pollock, Millares, Brancusi, Oteiza, Chillida, Chirino, Palladio, Ghery and Moneo, among others, is familiar to him.
As a slow response to this intense immersion, especially in sculpture, Daniel begins to experiment with wire and clay; He continues with wood, alabaster, drawings, collages and engravings. But if there is a material he identifies the most, this is iron. A material so close to his roots. Zumarraga, in the heart of the Basque Country, is in iron valley. He learns the trade of the forge and there he is still in the forge, looking for his path… of iron.
CV
INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITS
2021 Daniel Ibarzabal. Blanca Soto Gallery, Madrid, Spain.
2020 Daniel Ibarzabal. Island of Light. Monumental sculpture, selected to tribute the victims of covid-19, for a public park in Alcobendas, Spain.
2020 Daniel Ibarzabal. Forge. Centro Cultural Anabel Segura, Alcobendas, Spain.
2014 Daniel Ibarzabal. Iron Roads. Centro de Interpretación La Antigua, Zumarraga, Spain.
2010. Daniel Ibarzabal. Zelai Aristi kultur etxea, Zumarraga, Spain.
GROUP EXHIBITS
2023 .Galería Azur
2023 COLECCIONA ARTE. Blanca Soto Gallery.
2022 ESTAMPA 2022. Blanca Soto Gallery.
2022 II Certamen Escultura RAFAEL CANOGAR, (Piece selected as FINALIST).
2018 ESTAMPA 2018. Obra Gráfica Original Gallery.
2009 SIAP´09.
HONORS
2022 One of his sculptures was selected to be the prize for the International Photography Contest in Alcobendas.
2020 The City Hall of Alcobendas selected one of his works to recognize solidarity among its citizens during covid-19.
STATEMENT
When at the end of the 19th century sculptures began breaking with classical, and they started to create what they were thinking, their ideas, two great groups were structured: geometry and biomorphism. The highly rational and constructivist forms and the more elementary forms of nature. The square versus the round world.
I am interested in both. I don’t find the form of the prunus in the garden any less interesting and abstract at the same time, than iron polyhedrons trying to delimit an imaginary horizon.
During the process of creation, in which the object or the figure is no longer just solid matter, but the result that it makes with the space, one sometimes prefers lines or cubes and others; however, the sculpture leads you to choose curves and circles to define in a symbolic way, the transition of time.
Art, specially modern art, is often not liked because it is not understood, the eye being more accustomed to neoclassical, romantic and naturalism in the representation of life. But, I don’t aspire to show life as it is, I want to create another reality, to change perspective and preconceived ideas. That is why understanding modern sculpture cannot become an obstacle, for me it has to enter first by the senses and only then by reason, my intention is to create art that is open enough for everyone to interpret it as they want.
Try to see what you look at and feel what you touch.
