Zuloaga, Ignacio
ZULOAGA, IGNACIO (1870- ), Spanish painter, was born at Eibar, in the Basque country, the son of the metalworker and damascener Placido Zuloaga, and grandson of the organizer and director of the royal armoury in Madrid. The career chosen for him by his father was that of an architect, and with this object in view he was sent to Rome, where he immediately followed the strong impulse that led him to painting. After only six months' work he completed his first picture, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1800. Continuing his studies in Paris, he was strongly influenced by Gauguin and Toulouse Lautrec. Only on his return to his native soil he found his true style, which is based en the national Spanish tradition embodied in the work of Velazquez, Zurbaran, El Greco, and Goya. His own country was slow in acknowledging the young artist whose strong, decorative, rugged style was the very negation of the aims of such well-known modern Spanish artists as Fortuny, Madrazo, and Benlliure. It was first in Paris, and then in Brussels and other continental art centres, that Zuloaga was hailed by the reformers as the regenerator of Spanish national art and as the leader of a school. He is now represented in almost every great continental gallery. Two of his canvases are at the Luxembourg, one at the Brussels Museum ("Avant la Corrida"), and one ("The Poet Don Miguel") at the Vienna Gallery. The Pau Museum owns an interesting portrait of a lady, the Barcelona Municipal Museum the important group " Amies," the Venice Gallery, " Madame Louise"; the Berlin Gallery, "The Topers." Other examples are in the Budapest, Stuttgart, Ghent and Posen galleries and in many important private collections.
A fully illustrated account of the artist and his work, by M. Utrillo, was published in a special number of Forma (Barcelona^ 1907).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
