PETRUS

PROTAGONISTS

Surrounded by mountain tracks and typical Basque farmhouses (caseríos), Joseba Lekuona seeks an equilibrium in stone through his work, to which he has dedicated more than 20 years. After his time in the Stonework School in Pamplona, Joseba has done a bit of everything in his desire to continue earning a living from artisanal stonecutting rather than following other, more ‘industrial’, like almost all his contemporaries who work in this field. Joseba does not really know why he continues to be a stonecutter, but he thinks of the wide variety that exists between different types of stone and their surprising resemblance to human diversity: “harrobi bere batetik ateratzen diren harriak guztiz arras desberdinak izan daitezkeela, eta guk harriekin eta pertsonekin dauzkagun harremanak neurri batean neur daitezke termino berdinekin, harri batzuekin sentitzen dugun disdira eta beste harriekin nazka. Batzuetan gogorrenak direnak xamurragoak dira lan egiteko, oso bigunak direnak baino. Orduan, horrek ere asko erakusten zuen”. Sometimes believes that the stones chose him. In this continuous questioning of his own motives, the similarities between human beings (made of water and matter) and stone (pure matter).

Joseba does not have much time to exchange impressions or receive visits, with the exception of the odd eccentric client who wants to observe how he works on site; this serves as inspiration for the “creative stoneworker”, as he calls himself on his website. He has been experimenting and researching with stone for years, but would never have imagined that his philosophy on the gastronomic experience of eating in marble tableware could achieve such international projection and fame. This has allowed him to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle and work on the pieces that he really likes, although he sometimes misses the challenges he used to face in the past when he did not have a lot to lose.

Simeón Hidalgo, a retired schoolteacher, determined to develop his ‘Petrus’ museum project, a museum on the mediaeval stonemason Petrus de Gerguitiain, in the Izagaondoa valley. A scholar of Petrus since 2010, Simeón contacted Joseba Lekuona to see if he could help him with the cutting of some reproductions of Petrus’ work, sculptures on display in his museum in the small village of Lizarraga de Izagaondoa. Now, 10 years after this peculiar relationship began, Simeón calls Joseba again to create new pieces by the mediaeval artist. We follow this process of working with stone over a few months, with new reproductions and the re-encounter with the mediaeval master Petrus, one between a stonemason from the past and another from the present, as a kind of “road movie” inside Joseba’s head and his relationship with art, while we take a real journey through the route of the Romanesque art of Petrus, now invisible art on a route through a rural world that is slowly disappearing.

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