Gaspar Montes Iturrioz

Gaspar Montes Iturrioz (born February 27, 1901 in Irun ; † November 24, 1998 ibid) was a Basque landscape painter who was in the tradition of the landscape painting school of Bidasoa . As a painter, he started out in academic realism . He discovered Cézanne and developed into a constructivist . His late work was characterized by a high level of expressiveness. Thanks to his long life, Gaspar Montes in particular gave the landscape painting school from Bidasoa artistic continuity until the end of the 20th century. Because of the “sweetness” that he gave his landscapes, Montes is often referred to in Spain as the “Franciscan painter” with a characterization of the painter and writer Mauricio Flores Kaperotxipi .

life and work

Montes was born in Irun in 1901. His mother died at the age of 9. His father, a renowned carpenter with design skills, had to support a total of six children as a single parent.

Training and early artistic phase

From the age of eleven to the age of 16, Montes attended the drawing school of the sculptor Julio Echeandía , who thus became his first art teacher. In 1915, Montes met the sculptor and landscape painter José Salís from Irun , who supported the boy materially and ideally in his art education. With this support, Montes came to Madrid in 1917 to study art . On the way there, he was impressed by the Castilian plateau, which was a stark contrast to the green landscape of the Bidasoa valley. In the morning Montes studied in López Mezquita's studio and in the afternoon in the studio of Álvarez Sotomayor , who was then director of the Prado Museum . In five years of apprenticeship in Madrid, Montes built up a stable, resilient self-confidence as an artist. In 1920 and 1921 he won the competition for the new artists of the province of Gipuzkoa , a prize that he won again in 1928. In 1922 he traveled to Paris for further artistic training on the advice of his friend, Basque painter Ramiro Arrúe . In the free academies Colarossi and Grande Chaumiere he studied the drawing of nature. Montes was inspired by numerous other artists in Paris and met Pablo Picasso , among others . A certain reluctance on the part of Montes leads to a distance from the art of the avant-garde.

In 1926 he returned to Irun because of his love for the landscape of his homeland. He sparked in the next three years an intense exhibition activity in individual and collective exhibitions he stocked: An exhibition of Basque artists at the Museum of Modern Art in Bilbao , a collective exhibition of artists of the province of Gipuzkoa in Toulouse , the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid ( 1926). Positive reviews encouraged him to exhibit together with Bernadino Bienabe Artía in the Basque House (Hogar Vasco) and in the Saloncito del Ateneo in Madrid . The painter Jesús Olasagasti joined this exhibition duet in exhibitions in Bayonne and Pau .

Crisis years

In March 1929 Montes was invited to the carpet factory in Aranjuez with his designs in order to examine a collaboration with the factory with regard to his drawings. For similar reasons he visited Toledo , Segovia and Avila . On this trip he intervened in the art life of Madrid with works. In the following years he took part in several art exhibitions in Madrid: the Autumn Salon (1931) and the national exhibitions of fine arts (1930, 1932). After his return from the Aranjuez trip, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. A deep economic crisis followed. Montes was able to give drawing lessons in rooms provided by the Salís family, following an advertisement in the local press. The Academia de Beraun in Irun arose from this activity . Since then, Montes has never left Irun for long journeys.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War , Montes went to France for a few months, first to Hendaye and later to Sare directly on the Spanish border near Bera . But soon he returned to Irun, where his father and brother had stayed. During this wartime, Montes got by with commissioned work for the Irun stained glass factory. Here he designed religious figures and motifs for church and monastery restoration. He also gave art lessons during this time. He only came to his actual painting on Saturdays and Sundays.

Montes as a fresco painter

On the basis of the good relationships of his friend Victoriano Juaristi from Pamplona , Montes was able to familiarize himself with the field of wall paintings. He received his first lessons from Daniel Vázquez Díaz . Together with this he realized several wall paintings in this city in the house of the builder Félix Duarte under the direction of his architect Joaqiín Zarranz , in the restaurants Cava Cuevas (1936) and the Hostal del Rey Noble (1937) . Félix Huarte commissioned another mural in the Euskalduna Fronton of Bilbao from Montes . In his homeland, Montes realized other murals, Die Fábrica de Laborde in Andoain (1940), in San Sebastian and Irun the chapels of the Colegio El Pilar and of the Asilo Hospital (1942), that of the Apostolic Union (1945). In the following years he painted frescoes in hotels and private houses, tasks that took him to several Spanish cities. Wall painting provided Montes with safe and creative work for several years.

Montes as an art teacher

In 1942 he was appointed professor at the Academia Municipal de Dibujo in Irun. The art teaching became the great mission of his life. Two years later, after his predecessor Julio Echeandía retired, he took over the management of this academy. In 1950 he took on other art classes at the Escuela de Iniciación Profesional and at the Colegio San Luis in Irun. After his retirement he gave art courses in the Galería Txantxangorri and in his own house in Irun until a few years before his death in 1998. Montes was not a strongly controlling teacher. His students experimented freely in a wide variety of genres. Although they were all interested in Montes landscape painting in general, they experimented with Fauvism, figurative and abstract expressionism, cubism and even surrealism. His teaching was based on intensive observation of nature and an intensive type of drawing as a holistic event. Without an overload of theory, he respected and intensified the student's style. He tried to teach him his bad habits. All of this was done with great patience in an atmosphere of freedom, initially in the studio. Montes advised against going too early in the countryside and fields. The beginner is not yet able to see the light and then holds back too far.

The artistic development

The works of Montes, created between 1910 and 1920, represent his artistic starting point, academic realism. This shows the training with the artists Jose Salís, Álvarez Sotomayor and López Mezquita, who had taught him on the one hand a resilient technique and on the other hand the respect for nature.

In the works from 1925 to 1940, the influences of Ramiro Arrúe, Paul Cézanne and Daniel Vázquez Díaz can be seen . In this “constructive period” the endeavor to rationalize perceptions of nature dominates. The drawings are loose and precise. They tend towards geometrism and are always at the service of the overall construction. With the help of the color, exact terms and clean edge plans are defined. The hardness of profiles is softened with fine, short brushstrokes that border on divisionism and saturate the landscape. The chromaticism is in the range of horror. Soft and clean light creates delicate shadows that move melancholy. Montes implemented Cézanne's new spatial and volumetric concept.

From 1940 to 1973 Montes went through an Impressionist period. Here he gave priority to emotional orientation over intellectual. The coloring of the pictures becomes more intense. He puts more passion into his works. Monte's way of interpreting Impressionism has more to do with the French than with the Spanish. These interpretations of landscape are clear plein air paintings . They attach more importance to duration than to the momentary. They are characterized by darker tones that, as shadows, refer to the light in their transparency. During this phase, the art critic Ribera warned of two coexisting tendencies in Montes. Firstly, a more stylized, rhythmic diction that is rich in decorative possibilities and secondly, a realistic, raw and powerful diction.

From 1974 the expressive turn followed. The works from the beginning of the 1970s are already characterized by the regaining of volume in the landscape. Cubic houses or mountains blend into textured levels. The memory of Cézanne is still alive. Montes erased details that distracted from the whole. In his own words, “I like to remove the superfluous and immerse myself in observing nature.” In this way he achieved the image balance he had long sought. He reconciled the conceptual layout of the painting with the wonderful behind nature. With this approach, learned at Cézann, he achieved the transparent and clean expression that he had been looking for all his life. In addition, he achieved the balance between the permanent (the solid bodies) and the variable (the light, the color, the atmospheric vibrations, the liquid bodies).

A special feeling and feeling of the artist can be felt in his late work. He embeds his motifs in a delicate and sensitive coloring. Without renouncing his characteristic green and blue tones, he tinted the motifs with yellow, pink and orange flowers. His Rioja pictures captivate with the numerous ocher, the Basque landscape pictures with sensitive gray and lilac tones. Montes had finally found his natural ingenuity again. This shows the light and the deep spaces which it permeates in his later works.

Exhibitions and prizes

In the course of his public artistic life, beginning with the 1st competition of the New Artists of the Province of Gipuzkoa in 1920 and ending in 1994, Montes has participated in at least 115 exhibitions, 74 of which are individual and the rest are collective. In various interviews, the artist confessed that he was never too concerned with exhibitions and competitions. He confessed that he had never looked intensively for commerciality and marketing and declared: “I just lived in my world.” There were periods when he did not exhibit at all, either because of his studies or because of the economically difficult war and post-war years. This mainly affected the years 1922, 1936 to 1939, 1942 to 1944 and 1965 to 1966. Most of the exhibitions (around fifty) he held in San Sebastian. In Bilbao, an important sales point for Montes, he organized a total of thirteen exhibitions between 1926 and 1981. Further exhibitions took place in Irun (sixteen), in Hondarribia (seven) and Zarautz (six). 21 exhibitions were held in Madrid, the city that Montes wanted to conquer. Montes has also exhibited abroad: five times in Bayonne, in Mar del Plata (Argentina) and in Mexico City (1982, Palacio de Iturbide).

Montes was one of the initiators of the Asociación Artística Guipuzcoana (Artists Association of the Province of Gipuzkoa). He was a member of the Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del País (Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country). His works can be seen in the Palacio de la Diputación Foral de Guipúzcoa , the Koldo Mitxelena cultural center and the Museum Municipal de San Telmo in San Sebastian, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao and the Museo de Navarra .

Personal

Gaspar Montes had been married to Maria Iribarren since the early 1930s. The couple had two children, Maria Pilar and Jésus. Jésus Montes, like his father, was interested in painting as a child.

literature

• Francisco Javier Zubiaur Carreño: Montes Iturrioz, Gaspar. July 2002, Retrieved June 19, 2018 (Spanish). 
• Alberto Martínez Artola (Aunamendi Eusko Enziklopedia): Montes Iturrioz, Gaspar. Retrieved June 19, 2018 (Spanish). 

Web links

• El País: Gaspar Montes Iturrioz (obituary). November 26, 1998. Retrieved June 19, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ El País, November 26, 1998: Gaspar Montes Iturrioz (obituary)
2. ↑ Alberto Martínez Artola (Aunamendi Eusko Enziklopedia): Montes Iturrioz, Gaspar. Retrieved June 19, 2018 (Spanish). 
3. ↑ Ribera after: Francisco Javier Zubiaur Carreño [2002]
4. ^ Gaspar Montes after: Francisco Javier Zubiaur Carreño [2002]. The original Spanish quote from G. Montez after FJ Zubiaur reads: "Me gusta quitar lo superfluo y ahondar más en la observación de la naturaleza."
5. ↑ G. Montes quoted from: FJ Zubiaur [2002]