Painting - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

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Painting – 82/2157

Zumeta, José Luis

Usurbil, Gipuzkoa, 19/04/1939

Oil on canvas stuck to panel

100 x 156.5 cm

Zumeta (bottom right hand corner)

c. 1971

Third quarter of the 20th century

82/2157

Acquired in 1971

The radically abstract paintings soon gave way to more complex and intense descriptions in which obscure conflicts could be glimpsed, and which transmitted, through everbrilliant colour, a collective drama that could really only be the one affecting the country in the last years of the Franco regime. Painting from around 1971 is an example of the first part of this cycle, which culminated in a less aggressive abstraction that seemed to recapitulate some of the ideas of the European art informel movement, and move towards a reflexive synthesis of matter, gesture and Tachisme. [Javier Viar]

Selected bibliography

  • Bengoechea, Javier de. Catálogo de arte moderno y contemporáneo del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Bilbao, Banco de Vizcaya, 1980. p. 133. (Con el título Pintura).
  • Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 154-155.
  • Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. pp. 154-155.
  • Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. pp. 154-155, n° cat. 85b.