Ariel Elizondo Lizarraga

Born in Brussels (Belgium) on June 29, 1968, Ariel Elizondo Lizarraga has been interested in the plastic arts since childhood under the influence of his mother, a painter, and it is naturally that he enters the Beaux-Arts in Saint-Gilles (Brussels). His Basque-Spanish origins remind him: "Belgium, "this flat country which is mine, with a sky so low that a duck got lost..." (Jacques Brel), ... "Me too, I get lost... My desire to return to my origins, the village of my vacations with my grandparents. Things are not going well economically for us anymore, my father's (architect) business is going bankrupt, maybe a call for a change..."

It was at this time that Ariel and his family returned to live in Navarra and his close and intimate relationship with natural stone and quarries began and provided him with his first artistic inspirations. However, Ariel still does not practice his art full time as he has to run the family business specializing in natural stone and quarries throughout Spain and travels around the world. 

 About two years ago, influenced by his sculpting peers from the Basque Country and Navarre Chillida, Oteiza, Basterretxea, Ibarrola, the artist Ariel woke up and his body and mind in osmosis started to sculpt steel and natural stone with the strength of his arms! 

This Basque art, this ethnic art, ancestral, fascinates him. This primary art, this shock between the material and the man, this contact between the stone and the iron propels the spectator towards a past world, the origin of the world. The strength of the stone and the sensitivity of the sinuous lines of the iron exalt us and lead us towards the energy of the earth, the water, the air...

Ariel is a contemporary artist who relies on an ancestral artistic tradition to the delight of collectors who have already crossed his path. His energy and his desire to create always pushes him to go further! Two artistic lines distinguish themselves: refined and contemporary or traditional corten steel!