Ignacio Zuloaga, Eibar 1870-Madrid 1945

Private Collection, Frankfurt
Galería Hipola, Madrid
Acquired by the husband of the present owner in 1956

Die Kunst für Alle, Munich, September 1902
Jugend, 1903, pp. 158-159, illustrated in colour
Henri Frantz, The International Studio, A Modern Spanish Painter: Ignacio Zuloaga, September 1903, vol. 23, pp. 159-169
Die Kunst für Alle, September 1904, pp. 533-34, illustrated
Giulio De Frenzi (Luigi Federzoni), Ignacio Zulaoga, Rome 1912, pl. 94
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, Arte Español, Obras de Juventud de Zuloaga, 1949
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, La vida y el arte de Ignacio Zuloaga, San Sebastián, 1950, p. 223, no. 182, catalogued
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, The life and work of Ignacio Zuloaga, Barcelona 2002, p. 499, no. 182, catalogued

Painted in 1904, La Calle de las Pasiones is the culmination of a series of large scale works that is the perfect expression of Zuloaga's quest to capture the rich variety of Spain’s history and the colourful culture of its people. Exhibited to great acclaim in Düsseldorf the year that it was painted, the work presents a rich panoply of the myriad regional types and local characters that capture the essence of Spanish street life: gypsies, workers, dancers, toreadors, clerics and midgets; young and old, rich and poor, good and bad alike.

The composition is pure theatre. Gossiping and whispering, strutting and creeping, the characters that Zuloaga has chosen to portray are spot-lit to dramatic effect on a confined stage. The two contrasting leading ladies fix their audience intently with their gaze, the rest snake across the picture surface in a carefully orchestrated rhythmic shuffle.

Zuloaga’s choice of motifs and his celebration of this theme of everyday Spanish life epitomises the ideals of the Generación del 98, a group of writers and artists who sought to encourage the patriotic regeneration of their country’s culture in the wake of Spain’s loss of her colonial empire at the end of the Spanish American War in 1898.

Although he was Basque by birth, and that he actually painted the present work while in Seville, in the spirit of the time Zuloaga chose to represent the people of Segovia, the centre of Spain’s Castilian heartland. Likewise, although essentially simply acting as a scenic backdrop, the buildings behind the figures were actual houses of artisans and labourers in the Casa del Botero, a street in the town of Lerma near Segovia (a subject that Zuloaga returned to again in its own right over twenty years later (fig. 1).

One practical reason for basing the work in Castile was because it had been in Segovia that he had been able to take space in the studio of his uncle Don Daniel who kept his atelier there. As important to Zuloaga, however, was his perception of himself as the heir to many of the great Castilian painters of the past, including El Greco.

Perceived as the reviver of a great Spanish painterly tradition that had been broken with the death of Goya, in the present work Zuloaga combines the drama of El Greco, the theatre of Velázquez and the sharp social commentary of Goya with his own unique take on contemporary Spanish life.