Visit an exhibition and touch and handle the works

May 23, 2024

Unlike many artists, Hervé Larrieu likes people to touch his sculptures.

"It's another way of participating in the creative space," explains the artist, who lives in Bidarray in the Basque Country and forges his sculptures out of scrap metal at a forge in nearby Gabat.

One of the two participants in the exhibition Bi eskultore / Two sculptors alongside Aitor Ruiz de Egino, from Hernani in Guipuzcoa, Hervé has a novel approach to presenting his work to the public.

Normally, he comments, exhibition organisers ask visitors not to touch the works. Here, it's the opposite. "I invite everyone who visits this exhibition to touch the sculptures."

It is an invitation warmly accepted by visitors to the exhibition, and in particular by the students of Lycée Frantsesenia in Saint Jean Pied de Port.

A visit to the exhibition with their art teacher, Julie Guerin, introduced them to contemporary works of art of a kind that they had not previously encountered.

"The sculptures may have seemed strange to them at times but in all cases they provoked a reaction," reports Julie.

"The fact of being able to touch the sculptures and position them differently surprised and intrigued them. So it was rather a special visit, prompting them to extend their vision of art in general and to question what makes a work of art."

A new life for old chairs

April 01, 2024

In the small town of Bera, in Navarre, students at a local school are working to give a new destiny to a batch of dilapidated old chairs.

Focusing on the climate crisis in a visual arts class

December 18, 2023

Over a three-month period, students at the Lycée Frantsesenia in Saint Jean Pied de Port were invited to reflect on the effects of the climate crisis, drawing inspiration from a painting by the artist Txiki Agirre "Keixeta".

Watching order emerge from chaos

October 18, 2023

When she first began painting, Oaia Peruarena, like many artists, drew her inspiration from nature and landscapes, notably in the Basque Country's Baztan valley, where she learned to paint with local figurative artists José Mari Apezetxea and Tomás Sobrino.

A silence that fills space

May 03, 2023

A multidisciplinary artist living in San Sebastián, Iker Valle (Andoain, 1976) has developed an individual creative process in his studio in Hernani.

Creating turmoil in the midst of chaos

May 03, 2023

Christian Saint Marc (Langon, 1963) spent his childhood surrounded by the paint pots and brushes of his father, an artisan painter. Journeys to Africa and then to Greece awakened his vocation as an artist. Since 1994, he has lived in the Basque Country, in Aïcirits.

Contact us


ItzalAktiboa - Zitadelaren karrika, 22 - 64220 DONIBANE GARAZI
+33671005723