Victor Patricio Landaluze

VÍCTOR PATRICIO LANDALUZE (Bilbao, 1830 - Havana, Cuba, 1889)
Untitled.
Watercolor on paper.
Attached certificate issued by Mrs. Olga López Núñez.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 19 x 28,5 cm.
This scene contains one of the thematic constants of the artist's production, the costumbrista representation of urban life in colonial Cuba. Landaluze developed a visual language deeply linked to social observation, in which the city is not only an architectural scenario, but a dynamic space where hierarchies, tensions and forms of coexistence typical of the Antillean 19th century converge. In this composition, the spatial organization suggests with high probability Havana's Plaza de Armas, one of the nerve centers of Havana's public life during the colonial period. Landaluze's interest lies not only in the architectural fidelity, but also in the human diversity that inhabits the scene. The painting displays a wide typology of figures: elegantly dressed criollos, workers, street vendors, people in different social positions, and groups interacting in a seemingly everyday manner. In other works by the artist, such as his well-known scenes of markets, promenades and urban festivities, this desire for a visual cataloguing of Cuban society is repeated, often crossed by a gaze that combines detailed observation with a certain ideological charge typical of the colonial context.
Considered a key figure of costumbrismo in the Cuban school, Víctor Patricio Landaluze also stood out as a lithographer and satirical cartoonist, participating in some of the most daring publications of his time. After his academic training, he settled in Cuba before 1850 and, already in 1851, he worked in the workshops of the Litográfica Militar and Louis Marquier. A year later he illustrated Los cubanos pintados por sí mismos, a fundamental work of the genre that would mark his entire career. Settled definitively in Havana, he consolidated his prestige as a caricaturist since 1857, when he joined the weekly La Charanga. Throughout his career he alternated painting and illustration, and in 1872 he was assigned to Guanabacoa as colonel of the Volunteer Corps and municipal alderman. There he would publish his famous album Tipos y costumbres de la Isla de Cuba (1881). As a painter, he developed a style of vivid and flat color, close to watercolor and especially attentive to the light of the tropics. Despite living most of his life in Cuba, he received important distinctions such as the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Today his work is part of collections such as the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana and the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao.