Oroimena
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
Oroimena is a permanent public artwork in Getaria (Basque Country, Spain), open since June 2026. The installation was designed by Santos Bregaña. Its letters are set in Lamia, cast in polished bronze, in relief, on the wall of Artzape.
Lamia is a revival drawn from the calligraphy of José Francisco de Iturzaeta (Getaria, 1788 – Madrid, 1853), one of the most influential Basque master penmen of the 19th century, whose copybooks set the official model for handwriting taught in Spanish schools from 1835. The typeface reconstructs the lowercase of his “reformed” hand and derives its capitals from it. In Oroimena, that hand returns – now in bronze – to the very town where Iturzaeta was born: Getaria, also the birthplace of Juan Sebastián Elcano, the first navigator to circumnavigate the globe, and of the couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga. The piece thus closes a circle between calligraphy, type and public memory, and is accompanied by an essay by the art historian Javier González de Durana.
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
Santos Bregaña. License: All Rights Reserved.
This post was originally published at Fonts In Use