Juan-Luis Baroja-Collet was born in the town of Le Creusot in Burgundy in 1957. He returned (at the age of 9) with his parents to his father's hometown, Eibar (Spain), in Gipuzkoa in 1964. He was very young, immersed in everything related to crafts and the metallurgical industry by his father, a worker in steelworks, who told him how the sheets coming out of the rolling mills were then cut, welded and transformed into vats or car bodies. It was in Eibar that Baroja-Collet had his first solo...

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  Biography of Juan Luis Baroja-Collet

  Juan-Luis Baroja-Collet was born in the town of Le Creusot in Burgundy in 1957. He returned (at the age of 9) with his parents to his father's hometown, Eibar (Spain), in Gipuzkoa in 1964. He was very young, immersed in everything related to crafts and the metallurgical industry by his father, a worker in steelworks, who told him how the sheets coming out of the rolling mills were then cut, welded and transformed into vats or car bodies. It was in Eibar that Baroja-Collet had his first solo exhibition of paintings in 1978. The artist is close to the GAUR movement and to Eduardo Chillida, whose sculptures adorn, among others, the cities of Bilbao, San Sebastián, Valladolid. Working for a time with Chillida's son, he freed himself from painting, which, he said, limited him. He moved on to engraving, then to collage, which allowed an expression freed from technique. He works with iron, bronze and wood to create sculptures, often monumental. With automatic drawing, he practices letting go to express his sensitivity, through abstract forms. He is now internationally recognized as much for his iron, bronze or wood sculptures as for his engravings and collages. He teaches, and since 2015, directs graphic arts at the Deba art school in Guipuzcoa, which has become, thanks to his talent, the reference city for engraving in Spain.Juan-Luis Baroja-Collet's true vocation is to explore the paradoxes of life and objects. His work takes place in a path called "The other Basque sculpture"; he explores variations close to those of Andrés Nagel or Cristina Iglesias. With Mari Fran Agirregabiria, he founded the engraving and publishing workshop "Itzal" in Soraluce in 1997. He works with iron to create sculptures that remind us of ordinary things in life, but which nevertheless have their own mysterious identity. He regularly exhibits in galleries and art fairs, particularly graphic art fairs. The artist has received numerous awards over the years, and his works can be found in public and private collections in the Basque Country and elsewhere.
  
  

  

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