It should not be easy to put together an exhibition about one's father. However Javier, Marisa and Vicente Sáenz Guerra, three of the seven children of the architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza (Cáseda, Navarra, 1918 - Madrid, 2000), architects themselves, assumed the curation of Sáenz de Oíza. Arts and crafts , the exhibition that the ICO Museum opened about his life and work shortly before confinement and which has been extended until August 23 (the architect Emilio Orduña was able to visit it and analyzed its keys to ICON Design). They claim that the challenge has been more difficult for siblings than for children of .
The next July 18 marks the 20th anniversary of his death and his children have added risk to the risk in this exhibition where they do things that they could not have done with their father in life: "We would have killed ourselves!" Says Marisa Sáenz. He would have been against confronting his work with that of artists such as Lucio Muñoz, Palazuelo, Oteiza or Antonio López, not out of arrogance, but out of modesty. He wouldn't have felt up to it, they say. Oíza had a complex personality in which contradictions abounded. In a room for children's activities at the ICO Museum, we chatted about these contradictions. Children speak, not architects, and often nothing is what it seems and the impossible becomes real. For example, someone born in "medieval times" designed buildings of the latest technology.
Q.- Although he liked that he had been born in the Middle Ages, Sáenz de Oíza was born in 1918, curiously another time of pandemic, that of the Spanish flu.
Marisa Sáenz: Yes, she was precisely born in Cáseda because her parents went there to protect themselves from the pandemic.
Javier Sáenz: It was a very poor town, where I had seen the sheep collected and the people come out in procession after a dead man, but later he was awarded a scholarship to the United States and there he met a completely different society, very advanced. He left the Middle Ages to go directly into the future.
Q.- And the gaze also directed to the future of your professional practice perhaps arises as a reaction to that supposedly medieval origin.
Vicente Sáenz: But without neglecting the classics as the Modern Movement did, which he criticized. So in the exhibition are the horse of Phidias or the Victory of Samothrace. He was looking forward but out of the corner of his eye.
Q.- In fact, in some of its most recent buildings, unexpected classical references appear, such as the Castel Sant'Angelo in Torre-Triana in Seville, or that Santander Palace of Festivals that is reminiscent of a Mesopotamian temple.
MS- So massive, that's right. It is true that in its buildings it brought together that almost medieval tradition with the latest technological advances. And the Santander building is the best example. There he kept that fight to get the most out of the classic and the modern, and from it get the best option.
JS- He said that people now think they are modern for reading the latest novel by John Grisham, but that he was modern reading Don Quixote . He has always praised the ability to imagine. For him, imagination has no limits.
JS- I was trying to be always young. That is why he allowed himself to be contaminated by young people, with whom he was in contact as a university professor.
MS- In fact, I think he died young at 82 years old. With that creative freedom of children.
Q.- And he was related to various artists, who were also influential for him, as the exhibition transmits.
MS- All of them were joined by the patronage of Juan Huarte. Sáenz de Oíza said that there is no better work but a better client. And Huarte let everyone go their own way, without hindering them.
Q.- But you also had your tensions with Huarte, right? At least during the development of the White Towers, of which he was a promoter.
MS- Yes, because my father first proposed a solution, and then he came out with another, always looking for the best one at all times. That tower started with a Frank Lloyd Wright-style Prairie House idea. Of him, by the way, it has been said that he has curved rooms, and that is nonsense. What is curved are the terraces that join its different parts.
JS- He always proposed a better thing, even if it was at the last minute. And since it was better, you didn't say anything and you could only get to work on it.
MS- Imagine what it would be like for Juan Huarte to deliver different plans every Monday.
Q.- It has been said that Huarte, instead of paying his fees, forced him to accept a flat in the Torres as payment.
VS- Well, that was quite common at the time.
MS- Now, our mother wanted the tenth floor, which was a duplex, and she had to keep the room. It was true that it was a payment that she had not exactly chosen.
Q.- That project incorporated ideas such as the vertical garden that are quite common today but were not so common then.
JS- That's right. That tower is like a tree with sunken roots and a flora above, in the common area. But it is also like a house with a patio, which is always something ecological. It is a metabolic, organic and also a rationalist tower. Three towers in one.
Q. - To all this, it has also been said many times, and denied many other times, that the original project was not one, but two towers, and white instead of gray. So it seems to indicate its own name. Can we clear this up once and for all?
VS- There really were going to be two, but later one was ruled out because it was very expensive. As for the white color, let's leave the mystery. It's okay for people to wonder why the name. Just as when Oteiza [in the Aránzazu sanctuary] made 14 apostles instead of 12 and gave infinite versions of that: that if they were the 14 rowers of a drifter, that if we are all apostles and did not put 16 because they did not fit ... This reality of white comes from Juan Huarte, who was an admirer of San Juan de la Cruz, for whom that color meant purity.
MS- I think the two towers would be worse. In none of his works have I seen him repeat anything. Even in an urbanization like the White City [in Alcudia, Mallorca] he makes many equal but disorganized pills, which make up something that is bigger, like a dinosaur skeleton. Every thing he did had to be new, he never wanted to repeat.
JS- If you had made two towers, we are convinced that they would have been different.
MS- Although all this may seem confusing, when you see his different proposals you understand that he had a very strong decision-making capacity. If we say that it was contradictory, it can be thought that it was hesitant. But, on the contrary, he did not hesitate.
Q.- Let's say it was of contradictory and successive certainties.
MS- Exactly. In fact, he was talking about successive approximations. Not trial-and-error, because error is always learned, so there is no such.
VS- He was more interested in the process by which a result was reached than the result itself. He liked Picasso's Guernica more as a creative process than as a final painting.
Q.- Did he feel that there were unmet expectations with that building, since economically it did not work as expected, partly due to its location?
MS- It is true that it was a mistake to locate the tower in that place, at the exit from Madrid.
VS- It must be said that he has buildings in three places in Madrid with great visibility: the Castellana [the tower of the Banco de Bilbao], the Barcelona highway exit [Torres Blancas] and the M-30 [the residential building El Ruedo]. And he knew how to take advantage of all three.
JS- Something similar happens in El Ruedo. He said that if it had been targeted at young couples with children, no one would have criticized that project.
Q.- That video recorded in El Ruedo when he comes to dialogue with the tenants who present his complaints to him and he responds exasperated, today we can contemplate it with a certain humor. But I suppose that was not the case then.
MS- He considered that he had made a building that was the best solution for a building standard that proposed a certain number of houses with certain square meters. The problem is that one should always have the freedom to choose where their own home is. On the other hand, it was a restricted contest in which he was chosen, so it would be necessary to ask that jury whether or not it was the best proposal. In his form with a central patio, it is seen how throughout his work he always sought to make the house-patio, with different solutions. This is also the case in the White Towers.
JS- For him, emptiness was very important, which is what allows us to build space. And that emptiness is the patio. Jorge Oteiza did the same in sculpture, building with emptiness.
Q.- Since we are talking about Oteiza, another of his most important works is the Aránzazu sanctuary, in Oñate (Guipúzcoa), where a total will to work is appreciated, which integrates paintings and sculptures but is itself a work of art , almost sculptural.
JS- It has been defined as a unique work by multiple artists, and that is very good. It was a job for the Franciscans, who since Assisi had already worked with authors like Giotto. So they had a very internalized work with artists. They knew how to use a subtle but unforgiving iron hand. Rome prohibited things like the sculptures of Oteiza, and instead of facing each other, they let things pass so that they died. They obeyed, but they did not yield. Sáenz de Oíza learned a lot from Oteiza, as did the rest of those who participated in the project. They were a gang of young guys, and the young guys always get along. The place is magical, that's why the building was also magical.
Q.- If I'm not mistaken, thanks to that project he met your mother, Felisa Guerra.
MS- She was from San Sebastián and spent the summer in Oñate. So those three-month summers were given in a town house. Suddenly there were an architect and some artists, and I imagine they would mix with the town, and a peculiar atmosphere was generated. That's how they met.
VS- Aránzazu is, to my knowledge, the only work with three Prince of Asturias Awards for the Arts: Sáenz de Oíza [1993], Oteiza [1988] and Chillida [1987]. Incidentally, there are a total of four in the exhibition, with Antonio López [1985].
Q.- Your facet as a teacher is very important. Also in that was an advance.
MS- I wanted to transmit many things in a society in which there were very few books and images. So she made an attempt to be the internet prematurely. He had a word token system at home that works like internet search engines. For example, the same quote from Joyce's Ulysses had her tripled on the "threshold" tab, on the "shadow" tab, and on another. And so with everything.
Q.- We spoke before about your contradictory certainties, but these contradictions usually stand out also in your personality.
MS- I think it was actually multiple. Since it was complex, it brought together contradictions.
VS- He said: "What do I contradict myself? Yes, because I have crowds."
MS- A very Borges idea. He was a very good reader of Borges and also of other authors, he had a bookstore made up of many books, but all very worn out. For him a book was like a machine to be used, he had them all full of notes, worn, shredded. And then he took his content to his chips, as well as to his head. To read a book, I needed to read about six or seven more at the same time. Some took it to others.
Q.- He spoke of himself as a "monster", and it was not uncommon for him to criticize himself and minimize his achievements. Frankly, it was a modesty that sounded a bit theatrical, a little ...
MS- False, false! Oteiza told him: so much humility denotes pride. If he was messing with one of his own buildings and you dared to show your leg agreeing, he swallowed you!
JS- I was aware of how much I knew. If you are a good tennis player and have a good serve, assuming it does not make you superb. Well he was just aware of his serve.
VS- And then it is true that he considered that all works can be improved.
Q.- Was it so self-demanding, then?
VS- Yes. So it was difficult to give him anything, because everything you proposed to him he had already tried before.
MS- When he was little, the three older brothers, he among them, his father - who was the architect of the cadastre of Seville - prepared them in the afternoons for the entrance exam to the School with a book on algebra, another on geometry and another trigonometry. Also, they were very smart and hard working, and they competed with each other. For example, in math games.
VS- It was very competitive. So he liked to participate in contests.
Q.- It often happens that whoever is competitive actually competes against himself.
JS- That's what he did. And then he was happy with the result. He was sure he knew it was very good: he knew his subject, and so he knew when he had done very well.
MS- He used to quote Lorca a lot when he says: "I am not a poet by the grace of God or the devil, but by knowing absolutely what a poem is" [The complete quote is: "If it is true that I am a poet by the grace of God –or the devil–, it is also that I am by the grace of technique and effort, and to realize at all what a poem is "]. That "not at all" means mastering a subject in its entirety. Be wise.
JS- That is why he knew very well who his rivals were and who was not.
Q.- Who were your rivals?
MS- They were not from here, nor almost from there. It was the Greeks, it was the Egyptians, and maybe Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
VS- But at the same time he did not like author architecture. So it was eclectic. It was, for example, the opposite of Gehry, who makes the Guggenheim and then repeats it in many similar buildings.
Q.- In fact, a very typical accusation towards Oíza is that he did not have a defined style, a seal, let's say.
MS- He was actually an inventor. What he would have liked is to invent the bicycle, of which nobody knows who its author is. So when I was making a tower I wanted to invent the best tower. But if you take a good look at his work, you see that there is a recurring idea, which is that of the patio-house, in the Roman style. He always talked about the Roman house.
Q. - Is it true that you were not interested in money or worldly pleasures, that you were so ascetic?
MS- Well, he had his interests like everyone else, but it is true that gastronomy, which is now so fashionable, did not interest him at all. He had a very bad nose despite so much nose, and the sense of taste is that not even for those. But he was interested in a sailing boat, because he had two, and that you can consider a luxury. Those inventions that allow you to be self-sufficient, like sailing, he loved. In his house in Mallorca there was a cistern to collect rainwater in winter and use it in summer, and in the shower we had a black painted metal watering can in which the water was heated in the sun, and that if you touched it you would burn yourself. And in every house there was a piano, although I didn't play it, because I wanted to promote music among us. We also had surfboards from a very young age.
VS- It was austere, but not in the sense of racket. At the same time, he bought a Morgan car, which interested him for what he had in crafts. It was the opposite of a Ford, which was made in series. He wanted to be Morgan, not Ford.
MS- In their houses they avoided not luxury, but ostentation. Unlike the houses of the footballers of today, which are all ostentation.
JS- He always had a meter in his pocket. And when it seemed that something was right, he measured it. "This space is fine, how big is it?" I went to a hotel and measured the room. Or a chair, a sink.
Q.- Which of your works do you think you appreciated the most?
VS- He would say that he is about to do.
JS- But I would say Torres Blancas.
VS- Our mother would say that Torres Blancas, for sure.
MS- And that the Banco de Bilbao was triple as easy!