Anselmo Guinea

ANSELMO GUINEA Y UGALDE (Abando, Bilbao, 1854 - 1906).
"Odalisque", Rome, 1882.
Watercolor on paper.
Signed, located and dated in the upper left corner.
Work exhibited in the retrospective of the artist held at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in 2012.
Work cataloged in "Anselmo Guinea (1855-1906). The origins of modernity in Basque painting", p. 100.
Measurements: 66 x 100 cm; 95 x 130 cm (frame).

Anselmo Guinea realized "Odalisca" during his stay in Rome, where he perfected and studied the ancient techniques after having been formed in the studio-workshop of Federico de Madrazo. With an almost calligraphic stroke and diaphanous and transparent colors, it is one of the few works with an orientalist theme that he produced. Almost as if playing with the viewer, the young woman appears barefoot, covered by rich fabrics from her ankles to her head, while insinuating just enough not to escape her and her rapturous sensuality. She is arranged on a harem bed, warming herself with the smoking bronze brazier in front of her, in an ostentatious interior with vases and other decorative arts represented in detail. She acquires a fully dynamic pose in which she brings one of her arms to her head. Formally, the scene is filtered by a chromatism based on subtle transparencies and delicate hallmarks, carefully nuanced and worked in detail to enhance the volumetric expressiveness of the woman's body.
Anselmo Guinea was trained at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving in Madrid and in the studio-workshop of Federico de Madrazo. When he returned to the Basque Country in 1876, he obtained the chair of drawing at the School of Arts and Crafts, a position he held until his death. Later, in 1881, he made a trip to Rome to improve his skills and study ancient techniques. In 1890 he traveled in the company of Manuel Losada to Paris, where he attended classes at the Gerveix Academy, thus making contact with the impressionist currents that were then taking hold in the French capital. He got to know impressionism first hand, but also pointillism and modernism, and from then on his painting will take a turn, becoming more luminous and fluid. Guinea held exhibitions of his work in that city (1882, 1894) and in Madrid. He also took part in the International Exhibition of Barcelona in 1890 and in the one organized by the Municipal Museum of the same city in 1898, being awarded in the latter with the second medal. He took part in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts, obtaining the third medal in the editions of 1884 and 1899. He was also awarded a gold medal at the Provincial Exhibition of Vizcaya held in Bilbao in 1882. He cultivated watercolor, easel and mural painting, and in this last discipline he decorated several public buildings, such as the Diputación de Vizcaya, and private residences such as the one in Sota (Ibaigane). A pioneer in Spain of the new pictorial styles that were being developed abroad, Guinea is one of the most outstanding patriarchs of modern Basque painting. He was a magnificent draughtsman, and also mastered the foreshortening, the diaphanous and transparent colors and the serene, almost melancholic expressions of the Biscayan people he portrayed. His contribution to the renovation of the Basque costumbrismo and landscape painting will be decisive; despite the fact that industrialization was beginning to produce alterations in the landscape, Guinea will remain attached to a ruralist vision, for which he will find types and motifs in the idyllic valley of Arratia. In the years of the turn of the century his friendship with various local collectors, and especially with the shipowner Ramón de la Sota, allowed him to expand his thematic register with marine scenes and also explore the artistic possibilities of stained glass in a modernist key. In 2012, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum dedicated to him the first monographic exhibition dedicated to his work. He is currently mainly represented in that museum, as well as in the Museum of Fine Arts of Alava, the Casa de Juntas de Gernika, the Palacio Foral de Bilbao and other public and private collections.