Eibar, July 26, 1870 – Madrid, October 31, 1945
Ignacio Zuloaga was a Spanish painter. He was born on July 26, 1870, in Eibar, Spain (Basque Country, province of Guipúzcoa), into a family of artist-craftsmen of ancient tradition. In the studio of his father, Don Placido, he began his apprenticeship, later strengthened by the study of the Old Masters admired at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
In 1889 he made a first trip to Italy, visiting Rome (he has studio in Via Margutta), Venice and Florence.
The following year he went to Paris, where he settled in the Montmartre district: here he would share a life with a bohemian flavor with artists from the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist circle (Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Émile Bernard), with Symbolists such as Eugène Carrière, but also with the community of Catalan artists living in Paris, and in particular with Santiago Rusiñol. It was in 1892 that he discovered southern Spain, with a trip to Andalusia that led him, the following year, to set up his studio in Seville. There he would discover Andalusian folklore and bullfighting, to which he would become passionate by becoming a bullfighter himself.
It was only a few years later, in 1898, that in the company of his uncle Daniel, he visited the Castilian city of Segovia, destined to become one of the artist’s main sources of inspiration as well as a place of work. In 1900 he installed a studio in Segovia. International exhibitions multiplied during these years, and his works became part of public collections such as the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris.
The Venice Biennale also welcomed the Basque artist’s paintings, to which a solo exhibition was dedicated in 1903 that animated the artistic debate. Also in 1903 was the beginning of his friendship with the sculptor Auguste Rodin; he exhibited with him in Düsseldorf in 1904 and in his company made a trip to Toledo the following year.
At the 1905 Venice Biennale he is present with two paintings. In 1906, in Paris, he settled in the house on rue Caulaincourt, in the heart of Montmartre, his residence for many years. He travels again to Italy, to Milan, where he makes the acquaintance of Arturo Toscanini.
At this time he painted some of his most famous works.
Zuloaga’s fame, along with that of another Spaniard, Joaquín Sorolla, also reached the United States, where in 1909, at the behest of the founder of the Hispanic Society of New York, Archer Huntington, a large traveling solo exhibition (New York, Buffalo and Boston) was held to extraordinary success. Passionate about Goya from his early youth, in 1913 he visited his hometown, Fuendetodos, not far from Zaragoza; later, in 1915, Zuloaga bought the building where the artist was born, obtaining to turn it into a house-museum. During these years he also built a house in Zumaia, in the Basque Country, which in time would be filled with his paintings, objects and works of art of all kinds and periods, the result of an extraordinary and voracious passion for antiques. Between 1916 and 1917 a traveling exhibition of his paintings, under the auspices of Rita de Acosta Lydig, touched several cities in the United States: Boston, New York, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Saint Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Toledo (Ohio).
In the early 1920s, Zuloaga again returned to southern Spain, particularly Granada, where he visited his great friend and Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, whose celebrated El Retablo de Maese Pedro he would later create the set design and decorations. In 1925 he exhibited again in the United States, in New York, Boston, Palm Beach, to close the tour in Havana. In the same year he purchased the castle of Pedraza, not far from Segovia. In 1931 he returned again to Italy.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War the artist was in Zumaia where he also began to devote himself to sculpture. Newspapers report, later proven false, that Zuloaga was killed during the furious clashes tearing the country apart. The news is spread by the Franco dictatorship, which Zuloaga supports and of which he is the leading artist.
His last participations in Italian exhibitions are linked once again to the Venice Biennale: in 1938, when he received the Mussolini Prize, and in 1942.
On October 31, 1945, at the age of seventy-five, Ignacio Zuloaga died in his Madrid studio and was buried in the cemetery in San Sebastián, Basque Country.
