(Fuenterrabía, Spain, 1931 – Barcelona, Spain, 1990)
«In his work the predominance of culture in sculpture is very evident. Until recently, the culture that he took from life and transformed into a testimony were remnants of the primordial functionality invented by the Basque man and transformed into something else. In his hands, a wheel, a skate, a whisker acquired a statuary dimension and always deliberately preserved the memory of their origin. Now he is doing something else. After investigating the solar nature of forms, he has begun to investigate the solar nature of nature. It does not now investigate space. Before he could do it: now he does not. I was going to say that he investigates the form…, but he does not. He investigates the compact situation of the form, its muscular nature, its internal morphology. A sculpture by Mendiburu, today, is a compact block of plant elements – pieces of branches, trunks, roots, etc., which maintain a permanent dialogue between themselves in their corresponding voids and their complementary blocks». (José M.ª Moreno Galván).