Juan Ramón Luzuriaga

(Bilbao, 1938)

Two Figures in a Boat

1979

oil on canvas

65 x 54 cm

Inv. no. P00331

BBVA Collection Spain



Luzuriaga was one of the most outstanding Basque landscape painters in Spain’s post-war period. Throughout his career, he focused on seascapes, and in particular scenes of Bilbao’s estuary, a seemingly inexhaustible iconographic source for him. In fact, the artist internalised the subject matter to such an extent that he sometimes painted it from memory, recreating it time and again to the point that it became an archetype in his work. It is worth pointing out the instrumental role the estuary played in the origins of modernity in the Basque Country, closely connected to the region’s industrial development since the early 1900s. In consequence, it was regarded as the symbol of Bilbao’s prosperity and a highly attractive subject matter for artists of the time.

This oil-on-canvas painting is from Luzuriaga’s phase prior to the eighties, characterized by a predominance of drawing and the construction of very simple elements, highly influenced by the neocubism of Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1882-1969). Without overlooking a more formal grounding, he tends to structure reality in planes, using a technique based on glazes and swathes of colour. In this way he manages to render an atmosphere dominated by the grey tones proper to an industrial scene, although here imbued with a more pleasing and delicate character thanks to the effects of light reflected in the water, a recourse that adds great plasticity. Compositionally speaking, worth underscoring is the artist’s interest in arranging the image in different planes through an intense use of black in the elements located in the foreground, contrasting with soft transparencies, which is then gradually toned down to create a sense of depth.

Rather than underlining the industrial aspect of the place, Luzuriaga depicted it with a notable poetic tone. He manages to humanize the scene by creating a subtle atmosphere through the use of soft grey and ochre glazes, which, when taken together with the study of light, create a very nuanced chromatic range. Thanks to the linear character, which counters the solidity inherent to an industrial landscape, the forms seems to almost float. This image is more evocative than a scene taken directly from nature, with the aim of transmitting a sense of peace and calm as opposed to the frenetic pace of the surroundings. This stillness, reminiscent at times of an oriental aesthetic, responds to Luzuriaga’s interest in interpreting reality from a dreamlike optic, in order to create a pure and silent painting, removed from the anecdotal.