José Seijo Rubio

JOSÉ SEIJÓ RUBIO (Madrid, 1881 - La Coruña, 1970)
"Church of Santiago. A Coruña.
Oil on panel.
Signed in lower right corner.
Measurements: 20 x 30 cm; 41 x 50 cm (frame).
José Seijo Rubio descended from a military family, with family ties to the nobility. His father's profession caused him to move several times during his childhood and, although the future painter was born in Madrid, he spent part of his childhood in Lugo and Betanzos, where he received his first notions of art. In 1897 the family settled in La Coruña, where he would live for the rest of his life. His professional career would always be twofold: he would devote himself throughout his life to teaching, giving drawing and calligraphy classes (in 1916 he would publish "Teoría y Práctica del arte de escribir"), and would organize many cultural activities and artistic dissemination, being his figure, moreover, essential in the foundation of the Museum of Fine Arts of La Coruña, of which he would be the director. Along with this teaching and cultural activity, he would also dedicate himself to the practice of painting. In this field he was intensely influenced by Ignacio Zuloaga. His work, centered on landscape, shows a good knowledge of impressionist and post-impressionist painting, but also a certain taste for genre, ethnographic and folkloric painting. He was also a notable watercolorist, as he demonstrates in the work we now present. In 1926 he won the Third Medal of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, with the work "La Marisma", which would be acquired by the government and destined to the Spanish embassy in Berlin, where it was destroyed in the bombings of World War II. He also exhibited at the Paris Salons, where in 1936 he won a medal for "Ciego de Santa Margarita". Seijo Rubio is represented in numerous public and private collections in Spain, as well as in the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid, in the museums of Fine Arts in Galicia, and in some public museums in South America.