ZULOAGA Y ZABALETA, Ignacio

(b. 1870 Eibar, d. 1945 Madrid)

Spanish Basque painter. He studied in Paris in 1891, coming under the influence of Impressionism and of the group of Catalan painters around Santiago Rusinol. His visit to Andalusia in 1892 provided the key to his later work, leading him to replace the grey tonalities of his Paris paintings with more brightly coloured images of Spanish folkloric subjects and of male or female figures in regional dress, for example Merceditas (¹⁹¹¹⁄₁₃; Washington, National Gallery of Art). Zuloaga turned to Castilian subjects in works such as Segoviano and Toreros de Pueblo (both 1906; both Madrid, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) after the defeat suffered by Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898; like the group of writers known as the ‘Generation of ‘98’, with whom he was associated and who were among his most articulate supporters, he sought to encourage the regeneration of his country’s culture but with a critical spirit.

Zuloaga attached to the nationalist Falangist forces during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorial regime of the Generalissimo Franco, whose fawning portrait he painted in 1940.

Celestina

The Basque painter Zuloaga regularly spent periods in Paris, over a number of years, with the result that native Spanish influences and those of French Impressionism and Symbolism blended in his style in a quite distinctive way. Though he admired Impressionist art, he nevertheless soon returned in his own paintings to a crisper, more austere style schooled on the Spanish tradition. His dynamic control of line in paintings such as Celestina reminds us of his formidable draughtsmanship skills. The emphasis on line and open space, the strong chiaroscuro tendency, and the treatment of the subject, all suggest the presence of Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet.

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The Dwarf Gregorio

Zuloaga places the ugly dwarf, with a huge shapeless wineskin over his shoulder, against the background of the stern walls of an ancient city and beneath the canopy of a threatening sky painted with broad brushstrokes. This expressive setting, borrowed from the artist’s beloved El Greco, invest the image of Gregorio, who without it might seem an ordinary provincial “type,” with the power of a sort of symbol of the Spanish soil.

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