II Xabier Sáenz de Gorbea Artistic Commitment Award

Juan Luis Goenaga (San Sebastián, 1950)

A self-taught artist, Goenaga got started painting and drawing in his hometown at a very young age, first with the painters Julián Ugarte and José Camps, later in the Artistic Association of Gipuzkoa and even later in relation with the artistic proposals of the Ur and Gaur groups (1965). Between 1968 and 1969, he travelled to Madrid, Paris and Rome, and he lived in Barcelona for a while, where he learned engraving at the Book Arts Conservatory and briefly studied at the San Jorge Fine Arts School. In 1970, he returned to San Sebastián, where he decided to work and learn on his own. He moved to Alkiza (Gipuzkoa), in a rural setting where he worked in isolation during the 1970s in constant contact with the landscape around him. There, the representation of real elements, like the grass, branches or roots that he came upon on his walks, enabled him to create unusual images with a great deal of poetic and telluric power, like the paintings series Itzalak (Shadows, 1972–1973), Larruak (Leather), Hari-matazak (Skeins, 1974) and Sustraiak (Roots, 1974–1976). During those years, his references to nature and the primitive were a hallmark of his artistic practice, which was not limited to painting but also encompassed photography—between 1971 and 1972 he made an important set of quick pictures and snapshots on roads and spots away from Mount Ernio which are pioneering works in land art—and the construction of sculptural objects. Some of these works, accompanied by paintings, were exhibited in 1973 in the Municipal Culture Halls in Durango (Vizcaya). Goenaga’s first solo exhibition had been held at the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián just a few months earlier. 

After these exhibitions, he held many more, with individual shows in Bilbao (Lúzaro, 1974 and 1977; Arteta, 1977), San Sebastián (El Pez, 1974 and 1979; Galería B, 1976), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Eder Arte, 1976) and Madrid (Iolas-Velasco, 1976). In 1978, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum hosted a major exhibition of his works. One year earlier, the museum had acquired its first Goenaga work: Roots (inv. no. 82/268). This piece was soon joined by others, through either purchases—Untitled (1976, inv. no. 15/2)—or donations—two paintings: Untitled (1975, inv. no. 07/392) and Untitled (c. 1975, inv. no. 09/8)—as well as one drawing and two photographs from the Lúzaro gallery (inv. nos. 20/277, 20/312 and 20/313), other fundamental examples of Goenaga’s works during those years. In 2022, his representation at the museum expanded with the acquisition of a photograph album with 59 photographs from 1971–1973 (inv. no. 22/264). 

In the early 1980s, Goenaga travelled to Germany, where he was influenced by German neo-expressionism, which had already been latent in his previous works (Anthropomorphs and Androgynous series), and by the Italian Transavantgarde. He began to apply thick, impasto paint to his canvases with extreme gesturality. During that period, he also revisited the human figure and made figurative works with urban people and places—in 1980, he had once again moved temporarily to San Sebastián, although he returned to Alkiza three years later. At that time, his work garnered significant public recognition, like the first prize ex aequo with José Luis Zumeta at the First Donostia Painting Biennial in 1985 and the first prize in painting at Gure Artea, organised by the Basque government, in 1987. He also held major individual exhibitions in Madrid (1986 and 1989), New York (1987) and Paris (1985 and 1988), the latter where he worked for extended periods until 1990. The Arkeolojiak (Archaeologies, 1991) series signalled a return to atavistic, mythological images and to works that revised nature and magic, themes that lasted throughout the early years of the new century which he developed through both paintings and notable works on paper. Some of these pieces were on display for the first time in the retrospective devoted to him at the Palacio Aranburu in Tolosa (Gipuzkoa) in 1999. Four years earlier, the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea in San Sebastián had held an initial anthology of his works from between 1969 and 1995, curated by Edorta Kortadi and accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Juan Manuel Bonet, María José Aranzasti, Maya Aguiriano and Xabier Sáenz de Gorbea (‘In contact with telluric intensity and insistence’). In fact, Xabier Sáenz de Gorbea had already devoted several important texts to the painter in the newspaper Deia in 1982 (‘Juan Luis Goenaga, the passion for painting’, 3 March), 1990 (‘Latest paintings by Goenaga’, 25 March) and 1995 (‘Retrospective of Juan Luis Goenaga’, 24 December). Sáenz de Gorbea’s interest in Goenaga’s work was joined by another 2008 text (‘On the depths’, 12 October) written on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Epelde y Mardaras gallery in Bilbao. Since the show in San Sebastián, other essential overviews of his career have been held more recently, such as the ones at the Fundación Vital in Vitoria-Gasteiz (2017) and at the Sala Kubo Kutxa in San Sebastián (2020), the latter organised by the historian Mikel Lertxundi Galiana, the author of the latest research into the oeuvre of Juan Luis Goenaga (San Sebastián, Nerea, 2018). 

[Text: Miriam Alzuri Milanés. urator of Modern and Contemporary Art]