Goenaga: Raíces (1971- 1976)

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Work: Itxurain (1976), Juan Luis Goenaga
Exhibition: Goenaga: Raíces (1971-1976)
Venue: Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
Dates: 22 October 2024 – 23 March 2025 
Curator: Mikel Lertxundi 

 

As part of its programme of events to mark the museum’s new extension, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao is organizing the exhibition Goenaga: Raíces (1971- 1976) with the goal of delving deeper into the production of the Basque artist Juan Luis Goenaga (San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, 1950-Madrid, 2024), whose early output, often grouped together in series, is rooted in a close observation and interpretation of nature.

This is the case of Itxurain (1976), a work in the exhibition on loan from the BBVA Collection, in which the painter reflects his personal vision of the natural environment surrounding the caserío, the traditional Basque farmhouse, where he lived. Using a thick impastoed technique, it is an evident example of the groundwork for the expressionist visual language that he would continue to practice throughout his career.

Curated by Mikel Lertxundi, the museum conservator and expert in Goenaga’s work, the exhibition affords an overview of the works the artist created during the early-1970s, following his highly productive experiences in Barcelona and Paris which gave him insights into different painting, sculpting and printmaking techniques. Apart from the core selection of paintings and drawings, the exhibition also includes photographs documenting his interventions in nature, in consonance with
—a movement he pioneered in Spain—as well as boxes containing objects he picked up in the countryside. His unique reinterpretation of nature and plants, in a language blending abstraction and figuration, manages to convey his fascination with the nocturnal, the natural and the ancestral.