The online collection and picture sale

Bulls perfectly defines his earliest consolidated style, developed by painting themes of Castile and other regions with similar landscapes, wheat fields, broad areas of low, rolling but arid hills, mediaeval cities or, as here, groups of bulls at rest in a field, with a palette dominated by earths and carmine. Done with transparencies, thick paint and perfectly visible brushstrokes, the works from those years were looking for a structure -Cubist in origin- where fragmentary visions could be portrayed: labyrinthine urban developments, or sections of monotonous, featureless landscapes, expressed through texture, washed-out colours and repeated forms. In Bulls, the apparent naturalness with which the herd settles in the landscape is supported by a rigorous structure, in which the planes that describe the figures and the land are precisely put together and each individual figure is set into the whole. That is not to say the realist elements disappear; the impression of the immensity of the plain remains, as does the attention given to the postures the animals are shown in. [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. 56. (Con el título Toros en reposo).
• XX. mendeko euskal pintura = Pintura vasca siglo XX [Cat. exp.]. Donostia-San Sebastián, Kutxa Fundaziona = Fundación Kutxa, 1999. pp. 212-213
• Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. p. 146.
• Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. p. 146.
• Gallardo Uribe, Francisco ... [et al.]. Tauromaquia : el toro en el arte . Barcelona, Planeta, 2011. pp. 98-99.
• Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. p. 146, n° cat. 81.
• Iñaki García Ergüin : exposición antólogica = Erakusketa Antologikoa, 1948-2015 [Cat. exp.] . Bilbao, Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia = Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, 2015. pp. 52-53.