“Chillida and Pilar Belzunce were decisive.” Koldobika Jauregi’s tribute to his teacher

It was a resounding yes, without hesitation, an example of generosity. When this newspaper asked Koldobika Jauregi at the end of last year if he wanted to participate in a special supplement for the centenary of the birth of Eduardo Chillida, the artist from Alkiza made it easy and chose a work with which he symbolized the union with his teacher and mentor . He met us at his farm. “He didn’t like being called ‘creator’, because he said that ‘creator’ is only God.” This is how Jauregi remembered Chillida, who had “deep gratitude” towards the artist. «When I lived in Germany and came with an exhibition, he loved that I took him around with my old, dilapidated van, full of wood and tools. I think that until the end he preferred that to the official cars,” he recalled for this newspaper at the end of last year from his Ur Mara museum.

Jauregi was honored to have received the only Zabalaga scholarship awarded to a visual artist. «It was in 1990, three million pesetas. He liked my work and granted it without asking for anything in return, neither works nor reports. For me, he and Pilar Belzunce were decisive: they taught me the importance of transmitting, of collaborating, of giving. My Ur Mara museum in Alkiza is indebted to his teachings. How did Jauregi ‘reinterpret’ Chillida? “I have something better,” he responded in the supplement that this newspaper published in January in tribute to the San Sebastian sculptor. «Look at this work: it is called ‘Altxatzeko harriak’ and it is made of wood. Few know her. In 2000, Chillida was invited to a collective project in Germany, ‘Noah’s Ark’, where he had to go ‘as a couple’ with another artist. He proposed it to me and there we went, he with an engraving, me with this piece. He was generous to the end. “This is how I ‘reinterpret’ him.”

It was his last tribute to Chillida. Twenty years earlier, commissioned by the Cabildo of Fuerteventura, Jauregi carried out a project for the creation of the sculptural group ‘Homage to Chillida’. The artist conceived this work as “a religious space” in memory of his teacher.

A music lover, he told in these pages a year ago about his passion for music in the serial ‘The album of his life’. «I don’t watch television, I don’t like people talking to me while I work, but I listen to music all day. “Sometimes I miss someone singing to me,” he said. For that report he chose an album by Karlheinz Stockhausen, a German composer. Germany, the country that also brought him together with Chillida.