Studio: international art (80.1920)

MODERN SPANISH PAINTING

that makes him truly kin with the Primi-
tives of other ages, is the value acquired
by the colour in his buildings. 0 a
Castille, with its astounding twilights,
has filled Valentin de Zubiaurre with the
intoxication of its flaming skies, stretching
wide over the parched lands below them.
The clouds, so red, so inconceivably red
(and where should they be red, if not
here { ) and the soil implacably yellow or
light brown, and the sharp greens of the
women's skirts, and the cloaks of the men,
with their big round hats, so obstinately
sombre—all these, with the abrupt stand-
ing-out of his silhouettes against the bare,
wild landscape, have served to form, little
by little, surely, and for always, the palette
of an artist the meditation of whose vision
of things amounts to an act of faith. And
even in such of his works as are not due to
direct contact with Castille itself there
is an exaltation which reflects the colour

of Castille, with its blood-red night-falls.
Certain of Nature's magnificences have
never been better expressed than by
Valentin de Zubiaurre in his comparatively
small picture Crepuscule en Castille, in
which three silhouetted priestly figures
stand out, like immutable symbols against
an immense background of mystical clouds.
Mystical, yet very real. a a a

And colour it is precisely that more than
anything else gives personality to the work
of each of the two brothers. While
Valentin is the more Castilian, Ramon is
very much the more Basque, and his
paintings right from their essence are
marked by the moistened mildness of
their northern province. For though the
sun shines in Biscay too, it is always
after recent rains, its brightness veiled
by a humid curtain. Biscay is the land
of green and greenish tones, and Ramon