VALENTIN DE ZUBIAURRE (1879-1963)
Aitxuri (1, 551m- 5, 088 ft)
Spain (Basque country)
The mountain
The Aitxuri, Atxuri or Aitz txuri (1, 551m- 5,088 ft) is a mountain belonging to the Basque Mountains range It is located in the province of Guipuscoa, Basque Country (Spain).
Located in the Aizkorri massif, it is the highest peak of the latter. By the mid-1980s, its neighbor Aketegi was considered the highest point of the massif, but measurements at that time revealed that the Aitxuri was about 3 meters higher.
The altitude of 1,551 m is the highest of all the Cantabrian Basque Cordillera, from the foothills of the Cantabrian mountain range to the Pyrenees. The importance of this summit comes from its prominence1 which is 943 m and the class as the 36th of the peninsular mountains. If it is not the highest mountain in the whole Basque Country, it is the one with the most prominent prominence.
Etymologically Aitxuri means "white rock", and comes from the Basque words Aitz ("rock") and txuri ("white").
Like the rest of the summits that form the Aitzkorri massif, the Aitxuri is made up of limestone rocks, and it rises on the territories of Urbia in its southern part, and on Goierri by the north. At its feet is the town of Zegama, whose roads and railroad tracks stand out perfectly.
The summits that surround it are of almost equivalent heights, with the peculiarity that the one that gives its name to the mountain is the smallest of them.
The routes are numerous for the ascent of this mountain, and almost all common to Aizkorri and Aketegi.
The artist
Valentin de Zubiaurre Spanish painter, born deaf and dumb, as was his brother Ramуn de Zubiaurre, also a painter, three years younger than him. Both were children of the musical composer Valentin de Zubiaurre Urionabarrenechea. Originally from the Basque town of Garay, the Zubiaurre family lived in the capital of Spain, where the father had come to occupy the position obtained as musical teacher in the chapel of the Royal Palace. In spite of the great paternal desire that some of his children continue with the musical vocation, the fatality they both wanted to be born deaf.
Valentin began his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1894, continuing later with the painters Muсoz Degrain and Alejandro Ferrant and Carlos de Haes. In 1898 he made a trip through the Netherlands France and Italy to complete his training.
Valentin de Zubiaurre cultivated a painting, in which the Basque and Castilian themes proliferated, where the solidity of the figures was interpenetrated with a deep sense of color. It was not easy for him to get official recognition. At a time when naturalism and impressionism were the dominant trends, Zubiaurre made a more intellectual painting, combining on the one hand the mastery of his art with the intellectual elaboration of the idea. He was also blamed for having fallen into the vice of repetitive repetition of certain types and compositions once he gained a certain popularity, elaborating again and again the same formulas.
For years, the erroneous belief that the Zubiaurre brothers shared the making of their paintings, both working on the same work, was maintained. Nothing of this is true; It is true that they started from a similar aesthetic norm and that they dealt with a similar variety of subjects, but the results of both brothers were substantially different. In Valentin's painting there is predominating a certain melancholy that is not present in the paintings of Ramуn. In the words of José Ortega y Gasset , his work is "a lyrical inventory of Basque existence".
His work is found in several Spanish museums, such as the Carmen Thyssen Museum Malaga, where the Basque Coast at sunset (1949) and Landscape at sunset with dantzaris (undated) are exhibited, an example of Basque regionalist painting, resolved through a flat composition and the use of cold colors, characteristics of Zubiaurre's style.
In Euskal mendiak (Las montañas vascas), 1950, Oil on canvas, Bilab aFine art Musueul, Spain