Historians

Barañano Letamendia, Kosme María de

Art historian, critic and teacher, born in Bilbao (Bizkaia) on 30 May 1952.

He is one of the greatest specialists in the work of Eduardo Chillida, as well as one of his best interpreters. In 2005 he became professor of Art History Methodology at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (2004-2007). He has also been professor of Art History at the University of the Basque Country (1989-2000). He was also visiting professor at the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the University of Heildelberg, Germany (1983-1989). He has worked at the Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1986); and has been Deputy Director of the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid (1989-1991) and Managing Director of the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM, 2000-2004). Member of the Advisory Committee for the creation of the Guggenheim Bilbao's own collection. Doctor in Philosophy and Letters, he studied at the Universities of Deusto and Valencia, obtaining his doctorate at the former with the highest qualification. He has held scholarships from the Humboldt Foundation (Germany), the Smitpsonian Foundation (Washington) and the Basque Government, for which institution he has been an advisor on artistic matters.

He has carried out monographic studies on various Basque artists and is a specialist in aesthetics, publishing studies on ballet and photography in specialised magazines. He is considered one of the main interpreters of the work of Eduardo Chillida, about whom he has written books, articles and directed courses, as well as curating and organising various exhibitions on the Basque artist. He has contributed at different times to various newspapers, as an art critic and historian, including El País, La Gaceta del Norte and El Correo Español-El Pueblo Vasco. He has also written and writes for university and specialised magazines in the Basque Country, such as Saioak, Mundáiz, Muga, Kobie, Letras de Deusto, Hiperión, La Pluma, La Gaceta del Libro, Goya and R.I.E.V., among others. At the beginning of the 21st century, he has worked as a critic for the newspaper El Mundo and its supplement El Cultural. He is the author of the preliminary study as well as responsible for the reprinting of the historical book Arte Vasco (1919). He has also published articles and studies in a wide range of specialised publications all over the world.

He has mounted and directed more than fifty exhibitions (and edited their catalogues) in museums in Europe and the United States, including those of Alberto Giacometti, Philip Guston, Max Beckmann, Albrecht Dürer, Otto Dix, "Pablo Picasso Suite 156", "Pablo Picasso. Dialogue with Ceramics". Spanish Art: End of Century", and several of the sculptor Eduardo Chillida. His first exhibition on this artist was "Chillida Íntimo", in 1991, at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, in Madrid. Since then he has organised nine more exhibitions. He is a translator from German into Spanish of Heinrich von Kleist, Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl.