The online collection and picture sale

The germ idea behind a painting refers back to Magritte, although several other elements enhance and distance the result. There is for instance the dazzling light that invades the image like a burnt photograph-references to photography and cinema were standard in Ameztoy's painting of the time-or the actual description of the landscapes, so characteristically Basque, but also penetrated by a profound romantic melancholy. It may be that the ironic tameness the painting transmits at first viewing conceals the troubling instability of the theme, also convincingly relatable to the flying island of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The idea of duplication, also present here, appears in other works by Ameztoy. (Javier Viar)

Selected bibliography

• Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 168-169.
• Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. pp. 168-169.
• Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. pp. 168-169, n° cat. 93a.
• Auga doce = Agua dulce [Cat. exp.]. A Coruña, Xunta de Galicia, 2014. p. 231
• Viar, Javier. Historia del arte vasco : de la Guerra Civil a nuestros días, 1936-2016. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2017. pp. 382, 384, il.
• Ameztoy [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2019. pp. 96-97, n° cat. 7.
• Viar Olloqui, Javier. Vicente Ameztoy : la transfiguración melancólica. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2019. pp. 86-87, 93, 98, il.
• García Sánchez-Marín, Déborah. "Vicente Ameztoy : el final de la Arcadia", Minerva : publicación semestral del Cículo de Bellas Artes, n° 35, 2020. p. 30, il.