Lot 215: w - GUSTAVO DE MAEZTU VITORIA 1887-NAVARRA 1947

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

ROMERÍA

ROMERÍA

155 by 195cm., 61 by 76 3/4 in.

signed G. de Maeztu l.r.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

A gift from the artist to the father of the present owners

NOTE

Painted in 1914, Romería depicts a colourful procession. Maeztu was interested in capturing a moment of conviviality and of a community united as village members, dressed in their Sunday best. The joyful spirit of the day finds its expression in the dancing couple in the foreground.

Raised in Bilbao, Maeztu studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris popular with other Basque painters including Aurelio Arteta. Becoming a seminal member of the close-knit group of Spanish painters in the French capital, he frequented the Closserie des Lilas, a favourite haunt of both Anglada-Camarasa and Guillaume Apollinaire.

Like the flamboyant Gustave Courbet, Maeztu was an original and politically motivated thinker with eccentric airs and graces. Perhaps inspired by Courbet's elan as a political agitator, Maeztu organised a public demonstration against the Spanish Consulate in Paris, contributed to El Coitao and published two anti-establishment books, Andanzas y Episodios del Sr. Doro and El Imperio del Gato Azul, criticising religion, war, politics, power brokers, and the law.