Old Master Paintings & Spanish Colonial Art
Oil on canvas, framed, framed measurements: 82 x 72, canvas measurements: 65 x 55 cm. Aurelio Bibiano de Arteta y Errasti (Bilbao, December 2, 1879 – Mexico City, November 10, 1940) was a Spanish painter. He won the National Prize for Painting in 1930 and a founding member of the Association of Basque Artists. He was born in Askao Street, Bilbao, the son of Eusebio Arteta y Labrador, a railway worker, and Petra Errasti y Zabala. His brother Félix Arteta was also a painter and draftsman, rather anonymous. n 1921 he began in the frescoes of the Banco de Bilbao, in Madrid; for the realization of the same he previously painted each fresco and on a small scale, an oil of great beauty. In 1924 he was appointed first director of the newly created Museum of Modern Art in Bilbao. This work was not without controversy as the Bilbao City Council censored Arteta’s acquisitions. Arteta’s resignation caused a wave of support from intellectuals from all over Spain, which ended up becoming a criticism of the policy of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship from the field of art. In 1930 he received the National Prize for Painting. On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1979, Banco de Bilbao held a double exhibition at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum and in the exhibition hall of the bank itself. They managed to gather 70 works of the first magnitude, which were accompanied by texts from, among others, Manuel Llano, Edorta Kortadi, Kosme de Barañano and Indalecio Prieto. Reference bibliography: Barjola. Jose de Castro Arines. Panorama of Contemporary Painting (1972); Walk through Barjola. Joseph Iron. Catalog of the exhibition at the MEIAC (1999).
