Juan Belzunegui

JUAN BELZUNEGUI (Carcastillo, Navarre, 1955).
Untitled, 2005.
Ink on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 53 x 61 cm; 58 x 67 x 2 cm (frame).

Dated 2005, this work occupies the fertile ground between figuration and abstraction that has been the backbone of much of Juan Belzunegui’s career. The ink, applied through broad washes and black strokes with a strong gestural impulse, creates an open composition in which human figures, animals, and barely sketched forms appear and dissolve among the patches of color. This interplay between recognition and ambiguity is characteristic of a style of painting that the artist himself conceives as an intuitive process, built upon gesture, emotion, and the unexpected emergence of forms. Among his influences are De Kooning, Saura, and Zumeta, as well as Spanish Informalism and Neo-Expressionism.

Belzunegui completed his higher education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bilbao and has been exhibiting his work since the mid-1980s. In 1995, he was part of the +4 Group, alongside Koldo Sebastián, Félix Ortega, and José Ignacio Agorreta. His career was extensively reviewed in 2025 in the retrospective *40 Years of Painting*, held at the Casa del Almirante in Tudela, which brought together more than a hundred works from his various periods and techniques. His work is also included in institutional collections in Navarre.