Elías Garralda Alzugaray

ELÍAS GARRALDA ALZUGARAY (Lesaka, Navarra, 1926).
"Matinal", Setcasas.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 80 x 100 cm; 96 x 116 cm (frame).
Elías Garralda, a painter from Bidasoa who has lived in Olot for more than sixty years, has devoted his painting to the landscape, specifically to the different places and villages of Bidasoa and Navarre, as well as Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and others captured in his travels through Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Biscay and the Picos de Europa. He began his training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Pamplona, and also with the painter Jesús Basiano. As a result of the outbreak of the Civil War he settled in France between 1937 and 1939, specifically in Bayonne, where he received classes from the painter René Barnalin. On his return to Spain, Elías Garralda settled in Olot, completing his training at the local art school, then directed by Martí Casadevall. He exhibits for the first time in 1947, in the Sala Armengol, developing since then an intense activity that has led him to show his work on more than a hundred occasions in Barcelona, Girona, Bilbao, Valencia, Vigo, Madrid, Castellón, etc. He disdains to participate in contests and artistic competitions, but has been distinguished with the Silver Medal of the School of Fine Arts of Olot. Among his most recent exhibitions is the one held at the Arizkunenea cultural center in Elizondo (Navarra) in 2009. Specialized mainly in landscape painting, Garralda works as a true craftsman, using glazes and superimpositions in his paintings. He does not understand the painter's trade as a degree that is awarded after passing more or less academic studies, but in the concept of wisdom, as the Renaissance masters used to say.