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To understand the artistic personality of Jorge Oteiza we have to move back to an event, that we could at least refer to as unusual: two years after being awarded as the best international sculptor in the IV Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1957, he decided to abandon his artistic career He renounced with this decision to the international recognition and the economic temptations of the art business. This doctoral thesis has the primary objective of interpreting this intriguing early retirement by analysing the sculptural and theoretical development of Jorge Oteiza's work throughout his lifespan. Our starting premise is that this giving up responds to his personal conception of what art means. We will comment on this conception in order to provide coherence to the thirty years (1929- 1959) in which his artistic language was founded and developed. For doing so, we will study the hermeneutical keys that help us to explain the evolution of his sculpture, which ended up with the execution of «void» figures. This analysis will be enriched with Oteiza's written reflections about his own work, that contain a strong religious component. It is precisely this artistic and aesthetic conceptual characteristic what we consider to be the ultimate explanation of the abrupt end of his career as a sculptor. Esta tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo principal analizar la que es, quizá, la cuestión de más difícil comprensión en la trayectoria del escultor Jorge Oteiza: su abandono del arte en 1959, justo cuando su obra comienza a tener reconocimiento a nivel internacional. Partimos de la hipótesis de que este abandono responde a su personal concepción del arte, que además, da cuenta de la coherencia de su proyecto estético a lo largo de los treinta años (1929-1959) en los que se desarrolla su lenguaje plástico. Para ello, se analizan sus esculturas más importantes, poniendo el acento en los cambios morfológicos que hacen que su lenguaje plástico concluya con unas formas escultóricas "vacías". Este análisis se acompaña con el estudio de la importante producción escrita del escultor, donde es posible encontrar varias de las claves teóricas que justifican los cambios morfológicos de sus obras, además de que nos permiten hacernos cargo del profundo significado religioso que Oteiza otorga al arte. Esta característica de su concepción del arte y de la estética es la que lleva a Oteiza a dar por finalizada su labor como escultor. Programa de doctorat en Humanitats