13 March 2007

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

CONTEMPORARY ART LESSONS IN NAVARRA

Centre and periphery in the painting of the inter-century period

Dr. Ignacio J. Urricelqui Pacho.
Chairof Navarrese Heritage and Art

During the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Spain witnessed the same process of pictorial modernization that took place in Europe and which brought about a change of aesthetic orientation. As an alternative to the confirmation of the Madrid-Rome axis that had taken place during the century, another one was proposed that, starting from peripheral scenarios of the Peninsula, looked directly to other European centers such as Paris or Brussels. 

Nicolás Esparza, Helping Reading, 1895. Museum of Navarra

Navarra witnessed this process from an aesthetic position closer to tradition than to modernity, faithful to nineteenth-century aesthetics and influenced by the naturalism in the representation of themes and the use of color of seventeenth-century Spanish painting. Faced with the development of the isms in the first decades of the twentieth century, several voices claimed an academic painting, focused on figuration, the correct use of color -applied without stridency-, and the importance of drawing and modeling, learned from the direct contact with schools and official academies where the Special School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving of Madrid took a clear role. Likewise, other areas such as Barcelona and Bilbao also exerted their influence.

Jesús Basiano, Autumn, 1928. Museum of Navarra

The modernity of Navarrese painting in the period between centuries came from the contact of several artists with European focuses, in particular with Paris but also others, which resulted in the opening towards a more generous chromatic range, a more sketchy painting, and attention to lighting effects that try to capture the moment represented. In this sense, it was the impressionist debt that had the greatest weight, to which must be added the employment by several artists, of an expressive and impastoed coloring. From the point of view of the themes, the portrait of nineteenth-century heritage was joined by a growing interest in landscape and genre scenes. This was the case, at least at some point in his pathway with Inocencio García Asarta, Andrés Larraga, Javier Ciga, Jesús Basiano, to whom must be added other painters such as Julio Briñol, Lorenzo Aguirre or Emilio Sánchez Cayuela, who, through Madrid, touched a more modern aesthetic.

The Civil War marked a turning point in this process, bringing with it the confirmation of an aesthetic traditionalism, although not Exempt of plastic interest. A chapter A in this regard is the festive poster and, in particular, the Sanferminero poster, which reached in the 1930s a B seal of quality and personality through firms such as Urzainki, Muro Urriza, Elvira, Lizarraga or Crispín Martínez.
 

Julio Briñol, Landscape Spanish, c.a. 1930. Museum of Navarra