GONZALO BILBAO MARTÍNEZ. (1860-1938). Oil on canvas. "Scene in an Arab town".
Oil on canvas. "Scene in Arab town". Signed in the lower right corner by Gonzalo Bilbao Martínez (Seville, 1860 - Madrid, 1938).
It represents an oriental scene developed in a Moroccan population. A large group of indigenous people are staged, sitting and standing, listening to an imam at the entrance of a mosque.
Attached is a report prepared by Mr. Gerardo Pérez Calero, Professor of Art History at the University of Seville, and the highest authority on the work of Gonzalo Bilbao.
Measurements: 111 x 84 cm. without frame and 135 x 108 cm. with frame.
Gonzalo Bilbao began drawing as a child and in 1880 began his pictorial career. During these years he made a trip to Italy and France with Jiménez de Aranda. In Rome he worked together with the painter José Villegas Cordero, and traveled through the different Italian capitals, painting urban and rural views until his return to Spain in 1884. In the following years he will visit Rome again, travel through Spain and also go to Morocco, Paris and Munich. In Spain he worked as a painting teacher, initially as a private individual and, since 1903, as Jiménez de Aranda's successor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel de Hungary in Seville. In 1904 he married and fixed his residence in Madrid, where he continued his pedagogical work at the Academia de San Fernando. During his career he attended numerous exhibitions of fine arts, both national and foreign, being awarded a third medal at the Universal Exhibition of Paris (1889) and the International of Barcelona (1891), the only medal at the Universal of Chicago (1893). and with a gold medal in the Internationals of Berlin (1899), Munich (1905), Buenos Aires (1910), Santiago de Chile (1910), San Francisco (1915) and Panama (1916). He also participated in the National Fine Arts, obtaining second medal in 1887 and 1892, first in 1899 and 1901 and honor in 1915. Castizo painter, representative of Spanish manners, expressed in his paintings colorful pictures of Andalusian life and its characters more popular, and also practiced landscape, figure and portrait, painting prominent figures of the time such as King Alfonso XIII and actress Carmen Díaz. The light and vitality of his compositions bring his language closer to impressionist aesthetics, focusing on the essential representation of environments and landscapes. Gonzalo Bilbao is represented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, where he has a room dedicated entirely to his work, the Prado Museum, the Jaume Morera in Lleida and the Fine Arts Museum in Córdoba, among others, as well as in private collections both Spanish and international.
