Ramón Zuriarrain

Donstia / San Sebastián 1948

He started in the artistic world by attending the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid in the mid-sixties, when he was an architecture student. His interest in painting led him to the Paris School of Fine Arts in 1968, where he was able to learn the artistic fundamentals and put them into practice.

Back in his hometown he starts a friendship with the painter Vicente Ameztoy, who introduces him to the Basque art scene of the moment and guides him in pictorial creation. Together with him, Carlos Sanz and Marta Cárdenas he exhibited at the San Telmo Museum in 1970. These artists, compared to those of the previous generation that of the group Gaur they are inclined towards a figurative painting, in keeping with the spirit of social commitment dominant in the Basque Country in those years. In the case of Zuriarrain, figuration is mixed with surrealist resonances, as reflected in the work Transformation, belonging to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao.

In 1971 he participated in the exhibition Contemporary Spanish art, which was held in Paris, and in 1973 he organized his first solo exhibition at the El Pez Gallery in San Sebastian. Also that year he received the Grand Prix of Basque Painting.

During the eighties there was a transformation in Zuriarrain's painting, which approaches informalist abstraction, especially in landscapes, where the painter identifies with nature, this being one of his most recurring themes, although not the only one. His landscapes are sensory and with an abstract appearance, although they have been taken from nature. They arise from a supposed chance through green, blue, ochre, sienna and red spots that generate unexpected shapes. Color organizes the pictorial space and becomes the main protagonist, regardless of the objects and the theme of the work.