Ignacio Zuloaga - Corrida de toros en Eibar - 1899

 

Ignacio Zuloaga Zabaleta (Éibar, July 26, 1870 - Madrid, October 31, 1945) was a Spanish painter known for his genre scenes and portraits, characterized by a naturalistic style with strong drawing and dark colors, influenced by Ribera and Goya, in contrast to the bright and optimistic style of Sorolla. His work was not unrelated to wine. This is evident in "Bullfight in Eibar," dated 1899.

He belonged to a family of artists: he was the son of the damascener Plácido Zuloaga and the nephew of the ceramist Daniel Zuloaga, who had a certain influence on him. He worked as a child in his father's workshop in Éibar, where he had his first experiences with drawing and engraving. He received his schooling from the Jesuits in France, completing it in Madrid, Paris, and Rome. Zuloaga lived his entire life in Paris, as he married the Frenchwoman Valentine Dethomas. He was associated with Segovia, where he had a studio in the capital until 1913 and from 1914 with Zumaya, where he inaugurated his house of Santiago Etxea in 1914. In 1921, he also inaugurated his workshop and museum on the same property. From then on, he juggled three studios in Paris, Madrid, and Zumaya. He also had a connection with the town of Pedraza, where he purchased the castle of the Velasco family in 1925.

According to José Luis Díez, "this spectacular canvas is, for multiple reasons, a piece of very special significance in the still youthful production of Ignacio Zuloaga. It represents a bullfight taking place in front of the monumental Plateresque facade of the Orbea palace in Éibar, also called Unzaga and Torre Sarra, which was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century. During the painter's stay in his hometown in 1899 to get married, Zuloaga had painted an interesting study of this square in the Guipuzcoan town after the bullfight, preserved in the collection of Félix Valdés, in Bilbao. In it, the architecture appears exactly in the same frame as the final painting, such as the wooden stands erected, but absolutely empty of spectators, with only the corpse of a horse gutted by a horn visible in the solitude of the arena. Zuloaga moved to Segovia after his wedding, where he completed the final painting, populated then with women dressed in mantillas, fans, and fringed shawls, 'à la madrileña,' and Segovian types, thus committing a striking anachronism that, however, adds a unique appeal to the work. Moreover, this painting is a perfect synthesis of the aesthetic approaches that shaped the artist's personality from his youthful years and that he maintained throughout his entire production. Thus, factors as decisive in Zuloaga's work as urban landscapes with monumental buildings from different Spanish towns, which he painted either isolated or as backgrounds for his portraits, are already present in it. In addition, the canvas shows his interest in popular types, captured by the artist with sincere, sometimes extreme, realism, highlighting in them the dignified nobility of their poor condition, in line with the most genuine postulates of the Generation of '98, fully assimilated by Zuloaga. Finally, the decisive importance that Goya's imprint had on his art is splendidly reflected here not only by his interest in bullfighting – fundamental in the production of the Basque painter, not only in scenes like this one but also in a large number of portraits of bullfighters – but also in the reflection of the most bloody aspects of the bullfight, such as the dead horse with its belly burst open on the extreme right, which already appeared in the preparatory painting, and, above all, by the dramatic intention with which Zuloaga uses black, enveloping such a festive scene in a serious and almost funereal atmosphere, accentuated by the use of an extremely sober palette; also reflecting the pessimistic view of 'black Spain' held by, besides Zuloaga, other painters of his time, such as Darío de Regoyos or Ricardo Baroja."

For José Luis Díez, "it is also a unique painting in the artist's production due to its composition and format, as his urban landscapes populated with figures of academic or pusinesque size are extremely rare. As Lafuente already pointed out and is easy to notice, the painting suffers from an evident lack of compositional unity, not so much between the background figures and the architecture as, above all, in the characters in the foreground, conceived in isolation and then somewhat forcibly fitted into the composition. However, this gallery of types arranged like a frieze in the plane closest to the viewer already anticipates the main lines of Zuloaga's mature production in this field, with some figures of special plastic beauty that demonstrate Zuloaga's exceptional qualities for this genre, in which he would leave some of the masterpieces of his entire production, without missing some anecdotal detail, such as the peasant who lurks around several young girls leaning out of the balcony in the farmhouse in the background, or the improvised box adorned with a national flag as a curtain. On the other hand, this diverse and independent treatment of the different elements of the composition provides the painting with an enormously suggestive plastic richness, also wanting to be a youthful display of the compositional skills of its author, capable of including a huge number of figures in motion in a panoramic urban landscape, giving almost all of them their own interest. The painting appears as number 25 in the painter's handwritten inventory, preserved in the family archive, and a photograph of it signed and inscribed by the author with the following text is also kept in the archive of the Zuloaga Museum, in Zumaya: 'Painting in a village where there are old houses in the style of these in Eibar: a large background and putting up village awnings (for example, cretonne) to then put some little bullfighters / A race in my village'."

Source: Kunsthalle München - MYTHOS SPANIEN + onlinelicor.es