Romería

Romería was painted on a from commission journalist and newspaper owner Rafael Picavea for two of the rooms at his palacio in Oiartzun (Gipuzkoa). Picavea always kept a close eye on the careers of innovative Basque artists, both at a personal level and through his newspapers. At the turn of the century, he hired the services of two of the apostles of the modernist movement to decorate his home: Adolfo Guiard made a sketch for a symbolist stained-glass window, while Darío de Regoyos developed the themes of the romería festival and the aurresku dance in a nineteen-metre long frieze simulating a mosaic. In the painting, Regoyos changed his pointillist stroke to exercise greater control, constructing the scenes with false tesserae traced using the ferrule of the brush on the fresh oil. The resulting geometrization of the painting makes the composition more static.

Mikel Lertxundi Galiana

Inventory number: STM-001290-001