THE MAGAZINE NUEVA FORMA AND BASQUE-NAVARRE ARCHITECTURE AND ART CULTURE (1966-75)

Abstract

The magazine Nueva Forma. Arquitectura, urbanismo, diseño, ambientes, arte. Madrid-Barcelona-Bilbao started publishing in Madrid in the Spanish Sixties. More than thirty articles on architecture and art done by different authors from the Basque Country and Navarre were published in their issues. Architects and artists of different generations saw their work published in several issues, such as José Manuel Aizpurúa, Teodoro Anasagasti, Víctor Eusa, Rafael Aburto, Luis Peña Ganchegui, Rafael Moneo, Jorge Oteiza, Eduardo Chillida and Nestor Basterretxea, who were originally from the Basque Country and Navarre. These architects and artist viewed their work contextualized and put in relation to international architectural and artistic trends. Therefore, four volumes analysed the urban planning and development of Bilbao. The pages of the magazine were a platform to alleviate the lack of collective feeling and criticism in the Basque Country and Navarre area in that time, essentially as a result of the absence of a school of architecture and the intermittent professional career of many of these outstanding individuals. Nueva Forma assumed the task of disseminating the work of those architects and artist as a commitment to culture. On the one hand, this dissemination allowed transmitting the architecture and artistic culture from this territory in the Spanish panorama, and especially in Madrid, where the magazine was published. On the other hand, the issues create a genealogy of outstanding names, which, as a consequence, gave form to a third relevant cultural area in Spain, different from and as important as the ones of Madrid and Barcelona.

Keywords: Spanish modern architecture, Historiography of modern architecture, Architecture magazines