Variante Ovoide Sculpture

This work is made of corten steel to resemble ships. Its diameter is six meters and its height is almost eight meters. The vision is surprising because of the tension between the static and the dynamic. It is also convenient that it is located between the city hall and the river.

On the banks of the estuary and in front of the Town Hall stands the imposing sculpture Variante Ovoide, the work of the Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003).
The sculpture was created by J. Oteiza as an exercise in emptiness, specifically the result of the vacancy of a sphere. A geometric body that is recreated in the void that is generated and that is made with contained steel, a material that, together with its location, recalls the hulls of the ships that were manufactured and sailed through the Bilbao estuary. The sculpture is eight meters high, six meters in diameter and weighs 16 tons. Ovoid Variant, created in 1958, is an example of the work undertaken by Oteiza to recover European geometric aesthetics, and constitutes one of his last works before abandoning sculpture in 1959. The work was placed in front of the City Hall in 2002.
The sculpture is popularly known as the “txapela a mediolateral”.

One of those abstract sculptures that can mean anything or nothing, but add to the overall attraction of the place.