Dario De Regoyos

DARIO DE REGOYOS Y VALDÉS (Ribadesella, Asturias, 1857 - Barcelona, 1913)
"Strike in Béjar", 1900.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated and located in the lower margin.
Provenance: This work belonged to the illustrious pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz, a great friend and admirer of Regoyos. After his death it passed into the hands of one of his heirs.
With a label of the Kunstsalon Hermes & Co. of Frankfurt with the number 4523 and another unknown label with the number 9965.
Work reproduced and catalogued in the catalog raisonné of the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias by Mr. Juan San Nicolás. We thank Mr. Juan San Nicolás for his invaluable help and collaboration in the cataloguing of the work.
Measurements: 39 x 30 cm.

Bibliography:
-Darío de Regoyos, catalog of the exhibition held by the Fundación Caja de Pensiones in Barcelona and Madrid, 1986-1987. Reproduced in color on page 166 and described on page 290.
-Joaquín de la Puente, Juan San Nicolás, Los Genios de la Pintura Española: "Regoyos", published by Sarpe in 1988. Reproduced in color in plate nº 26 and on page 89.
-Centro y Periferia en la Modernización de Pintura Española, catalog of the exhibition held by the Ministry of Culture at the Palacio de Velázquez (Madrid) and the Museo de Bellas Artes (Bilbao) from December 1993 to March 1994. It appeared in color on page 64 and in black and white on page 87.
-Tradition and Modernity in the Painting of Darío de Regoyos, catalog of the exhibition held by the City Council of Gijón at the Nicanor Piñole Museum in Gijón, from July 4 to September 8, 2002. Reproduced in color on page 57.
-Barón, Javier, "La recepción crítica de Darío de Regoyos en la España de su tiempo", published in the catalog of the exhibition Darío de Regoyos. The Impressionist Adventure, held at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum from October 7, 2013 to January 26, 2014. Reproduced in color on page 36.

Exhibitions:
-Regoyos, exhibition held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, 16 rue Lafitte, Paris, April 1901. Appeared as No. 8 of the works exhibited under the title Les grèves (Estrémadure).
-Exhibition of Regoyos's work held at Kunstsalon Hermes & Co, Frankfurt am Mein, 1901. No catalog available.
-17e Salon des Artistes Indépendants, Grande Serre de l'Alma, au Cours la Reine, Paris, April 20 to May 21, 1901. It was exhibited under No. 848 under the title Les grèves (Estrémadure).
-I Exhibition of the New Society of Spanish Artists (The XV), San Sebastian, July 15, 1905. San Martín Market. Appeared as number 91 under the title Las huelgas en Béjar.
-Darío de Regoyos, exhibition held at Galerías del Fayans Catalá, Cortes nº 615, Barcelona, from January 18 to February 3, 1912. It appeared as nº 14 of the works exhibited under the title Las huelgas en Béjar, owned by Isaac Albéniz.
-Darío de Regoyos, exhibition held by the Fundación Caja de Pensiones in Barcelona and Madrid, 1986-1987. It appeared as nº 74 of the works exhibited under the title La huelga en Béjar (The Strike in Béjar).
-Centro y Periferia en la Modernización de Pintura Española, exhibition held by the Ministry of Culture at the Palacio de Velázquez (Madrid) and the Museo de Bellas Artes (Bilbao) from December 1993 to March 1994. It appeared as number 8 of the works exhibited under the title La huelga en Béjar.
-Tradition and Modernity in the Painting of Darío de Regoyos, exhibition held by the City Council of Gijón at the Nicanor Piñole Museum in Gijón, from July 4 to September 8, 2002. It appeared as number 7 of the works exhibited under the title La huelga en Béjar (The strike in Béjar).

This work became Isaac Albéniz's property at the end of 1905, when Regoyos sent several oil paintings to his house, some to sell and others to keep. With this painting he returned to social themes, in this case showing the peaceful attitude of a group of workers portrayed in the main square of Béjar, next to the market. It is a sunny day and passers-by stop to contemplate the strikers and their activities. Regoyos was one of the first artists to depict a strike in Spain. The distribution of space and color have been perfectly
perfectly executed in this painting.

The great impressionist painter Dario De Regoyos visited Béjar in 1900, at a time when strikes and popular uprisings were frequent. He would stay in a hotel in the Plaza Mayor, and from the balcony of his room he painted the scene shown here: two groups of men in dark suits are gathered in the center of the square, probably to demonstrate in front of the town hall. The arcades frame the line of stately houses in the background and a second group of people breaks up in the background next to a wall. In the foreground, we see the market stalls. From a bird's eye view, they only show us the awnings and, underneath, boxes overflowing with fruits and vegetables. The white cobblestone path that zigzags between the pebbled ground contributes to the configuration of the space. In this painting, the painter combines his pictorial and social concerns. Unlike many impressionists, Regoyo does not favor bright and luminous colors, but his dark but richly nuanced palette conveys a somewhat melancholic and reflective mood.

The son of a prominent architect then active in Asturias, Darío de Regoyos trained in Madrid, at the San Fernando Academy (1878). Soon, induced by his teacher Carlos de Haes and his musician friends, Enrique F. Arbós and Isaac Albéniz, he settled in Brussels (1879), where he would be a disciple of Josep Quinaux. In the Belgian capital he came into contact with E. Verhaeren, G. Rodenbach and M. Maeterlinck, a group of young creators who were forging the main Belgian cultural movement of the end of the century, an interest in which he himself would play an eminent role. Thus, he was part of the groups L'Essor (1881-83) and Les XX (1883-93). However, he never took root anywhere; even during his Belgian period he frequently returned to Spain, and during the eighties he lived in the Basque Country, where he revitalized the already important local modern art school. In 1888 he accompanied the writer Verhaeren on a trip through Spain (he had already done it before with other Belgian companions), which would be the germ of his famous series "España negra" (Black Spain), published in Barcelona in 1899. With this work, Regoyos was a pioneer in Spain of the so-called neoxylography or creative xylography. If during the 1880's he only participated in exhibitions in Belgium and Holland, in the 1890's he would also participate in Paris, taking part regularly in the Salon des Indépendants. From these years he would also show his work in Madrid, Munich and Barcelona, the latter city where his painting was honored in 1894 by the most important figures of modernism. In Belgium, Regoyos was also linked to the society La Libre Esthétique from its origin (1894), an association that gathered in this country the inheritance of the artistic modernity. In 1897 he held his first solo exhibition at the prominent Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris. The second, the following year, would take place at Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, where he was the artistic director of the magazine "Luz", and from 1900 the range of his exhibitions expanded, his work being shown in Bilbao, Frankfurt, Berlin, The Hague, Venice, Bayonne, San Sebastian, London, Mexico City, Bordeaux and Buenos Aires, among other cities. At the beginning of the 20th century Regoyos intensified his travels, living between Granada and Bilbao. In 1911 he settled in Barcelona, where he died two years later.
He is represented in the Prado Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña in Barcelona, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao and the Gerstenmaier Collection, among many other museums and institutions.