Zigor

It was in 1996, after meeting the art dealer Paul Haim, that Zigor began working with bronze, fascinated by the play of light on this material.

It was in 1983, upon being commissioned to take a portrait of the sculptor Remigio Mendiburu that Zigor ventured into his subject's workshop in Hondarribia. It proved to be a revelation for Zigor, who decided to devote himself to this art whose force and sensual resonance he so keenly felt: an art form embracing thought that is continuously disrupted and continuously renewed. He set up his workshop in Biarritz and his name joined those of great contemporary Basque Country sculptors, such as Nestor Basterretxea, Eduardo Chillida, Jorge Oteiza, where the art of sculpture stands intrinsically linked to the motherland.

In 1977, he became a photojournalist for major news magazines and the Capa press agency. He travelled the world until 1982, especially in the Sahara desert, and these life experiences chronicled, in his eyes, the shared fabric of land and language. This profound awareness influenced his perspective and his photos, between instinct and epiphany. After his career as a photojournalist, Zigor did not touch his Leica for several years. It was in the 2010s that he felt the need to pick up this contemplative tool once again, but this time with a totally artistic focus. No colours, which he considers to be a distraction. Portraits and landscapes juxtapose Zigor's photographic work, in which black and white perpetuates the perceived poetic texture.

His poems were published commencing 1973, and he travelled the world as a photojournalist for major news magazines and the Capa press agency until 1982. Then, in 1983, he decided to give full rein to his creativity through sculpture and rapidly joined the ranks of great contemporary Basque sculptors. Zigor draws inspiration from nature, giving new form to its original movement of organized chaos. Sculptures, photographs, paintings and poems reverberate together and convey the archaic, ubiquitous strength of a world and humanity bound together by their roots.

It was at the beginning of the 1970s that Zigor published his first collections of poems in the Basque language and he has been published every year since then in the Basque review Poesiaren hatsa and Maiatz. His poems, a cross between solitary strolls and haïkus, are now translated in French, Spanish and English.

Kepa Akixo aka Zigor, is a sculptor, photographer, artist and poet. He was born in 1947 in Aretxabaleta, (a town in the province of Gipuzkoa), in the Southern Basque Country.

Kepa Akixo was born in 1947 and grew up in a small mountain village in the province of Guipuzcoa, in the Southern Basque Country. Somewhat of a tearaway child and a recalcitrant student, at the age of eleven he joined the Catholic seminary boarding school in Saturraran where he discovered the ocean and biblical texts. Encountering the metaphysics and profundity of both the sea and sacred writings was a decisive factor in Zigor's development as an autodidact. At the age of 14, he worked as a fitter and turner, and excelled in the sport of Basque pelota. Reflexes conditioned as a labourer and pelotari were to have a significant impact on his artistic kinesics to come, with repeated momentum from the wall to the work.