Dario de Regoyos

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Darío de Regoyos y Valdés (Ribadesella, November 1, 1857-Barcelona, October 29, 1913) was a Spanish painter of a personal late impressionist style, with pointillist and symbolist work, in addition to an important chapter dedicated to the vision of "black Spain."

Biography

He began drawing with his father, Darío Regoyos Morenillo, an engineer and architect, native of Valladolid, and a fan of painting. In his youth, the family moved from his native Ribadesella to Madrid where his father was accepted into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. After his father's death, Darío enrolled in the same Academy in the subject Introduction to landscape taught by Carlos de Haes, introducer of plenary techniques in Spain.

In 1879, he traveled to Brussels accompanying Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Fernández Arbós, who were going to be awarded by the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with "Distinction" and "Excellence", respectively. In the Belgian capital he made contact with 'artistic modernity' and became a disciple of Joseph Quinaux. In 1882 he joined the group of L'Essor (El Vuelo), created in 1876 by a heterogeneous group of artists, followers of different aesthetics, and whose common objective was a denial of neoclassicism and academicism. However, Regoyos, due to his initial preference for Realist artists over the avant-garde, distanced himself from L'Essor two years later (1884), having exhibited only with them during the years 1883 and 1884. This period corresponds to the portrait made by Theo van Rysselberghe, also a member of L'Essor, where Regoyos appears playing a guitar.

Among those who had decided, for the reasons mentioned, to end their participation in L'Essor, promoted by the lawyer and painter Octave Maus and the patron and writer Edmond Picard, the group called Les XX was born in 1883. This group, which was made up of twenty members (eleven founders and nine guests), who called themselves twentytistas, was made up of other artists such as James Ensor, Theo van Rysselberghe and Fernand Khnopff. This organization had the objective of promoting an annual exhibition, in which each artist would present six works, which, since there was no jury, denied or suppressed competition between them. All of this would, finally, be included in a catalogue, as well as a simultaneous series of conferences and concerts. Among those invited to these exhibitions are names at the top of Impressionist development, such as Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro or Toulouse-Lautrec. That same year, Darío de Regoyos decided to spend the summer months again in Guipúzcoa, which over the years would end up becoming his permanent residence. As noted in La España Negra , in his house on the Ategorrieta road, near San Sebastián, he was host to Pío Baroja, with whom he got along. From these trips, his growing relationship with French-trained Basque artists, such as Ignacio Zuloaga, Paco Durrio and Pablo Uranga, stands out. Together with them, the painter will strive to promote collective exhibitions such as those brought to Belgium by the Association of Basque Artists.

In 1888, Darío de Regoyos wrote an important letter to the poet Émile Verhaeren, who had been his friend almost from the beginning of his stay in Brussels, due to the death of his father. In the letter, he invited him to take a trip together through Spain, from which the book Black Spain would be born. This will begin in Guipúzcoa and they visited, in this order, Guetaria, Zarauz, Renteria, Pamplona, Madrid, Ávila and finally Burgos. However, first only Émile Verhaeren's observations were published in the magazine L’Art Moderne, under the name Impressions d’artiste. It was not until its publication in the magazine Luz founded by the painter himself, when it would receive the name La España Negra, with the extension of this with woodcut illustrations and a series of texts written by himself. It is, above all, the contributions of Darío de Regoyos that position this book as a work critical of the Spain of the moment, and who also finally decides to add the adjective black. The works about this small-town Spain, traditional and in The majority, controlled by religion, are characterized by a latent search for expression, and ideas that bring them closer to what will be the generation of '98. However, this closeness is not based exclusively on the tragic idea about Spain that these authors propose, but the way of living and seeing the landscape, where twilight cities predominate, the feeling of ruin, and of being interchangeable between them.

The health problems of his wife, whom he had married in 1875, and his own, began to complicate the life of the painter, who until now had remained in a comfortable situation. Father of six children, he would multiply for this cause, and to be able to finance the care that his family required, his participation in painting competitions without great success. It is at this moment, when his previous friendship with Camille Pissarro, unites him with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who will progressively market his work. Thanks, also to Pissarro, he resumes his desire to become a great landscape painter, this time trying the techniques pointillists, which makes him the only Spaniard who will carry out this technique. However, as it is a pictorial technique that takes a long time to complete, it ends up being abandoned by the artist.

He thus returned to his quick brush strokes and to painting mostly outdoors starting in 1900, during a new trip through Spain in search of different landscapes. This series of paintings slightly increases his popularity. The popular painting of La Concha belongs to this period, made around 1906, where it achieves a perfect balance between green, ochre, mauve and blue tones and in its composition in late impressionism. After two Stays in Durango in 1905 and 1907, during which he painted various views of the town and neighboring towns, in 1909 he moved to Getxo and received the care of the doctor Juan Antonio Gádiz, given his increasingly worse state of health. For these same reasons, he moves to Barcelona, where he is diagnosed with tongue cancer, and where he spends the last three years of his life having already lost the ability to speak. On October 29, 1913 he died in Barcelona due to this disease. He continued painting until the end of his days. In Belgium, he received a tribute from an exhibition by the La Libre Esthétique association, promoted by its director Octave Maus.

Work

Considered a master of light and color, in his painting, a growing symbolism can be seen, where practically all the elements respond to a larger idea, in the form of metaphor. As a painter, there is no doubt that he possessed great curiosity, with which he was able to leave aside naturalism and delve into impressionism, and even surpass it, with pointillism and pre-symbolism. He therefore becomes more daring than contemporary painters such as Sorolla or Ignacio Zuloaga. His drawing is somewhat primary, almost naive, in contrast with a bright color of international taste, which was then mostly reviled in Spain. There is a large sample of his art in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, the MNAC in Barcelona and the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga.

If one tried to divide his painting into stages, one would have to focus on the concept, rather than the method, to find differences. As two large categories, Regoyos' painting can be understood as sometimes intimate and other times critical and expressive. It should also be noted that outside of these, there are several portraits and a self-portrait in his work. In the first, the painting will be subject to the achievement of a moment, a memory or an impression of nature. Examples of this are works such as Collecting strawberries, Pino de Bejar, or El gallinero. The palette here is clear, with soft or sometimes artificial colors. In the second he always remains critical, with a torn vision of reality and where he reaches expressionism. It is in his mature stage as a painter when he delves into plenairism. An example of this is Hernani Landscape dated around 1900, which shows a panoramic view of this town at sunset, with the golden lights that bathe the small houses and the old bridge, framed by Mount Adarra. The Passage of the Train, around 1902, shows the train passing near San Sebastián, in Ategorrieta. This pictorial stage could easily be summarized in the words of the painter himself in the French magazine Mercure de France in 1905.

If I started my life again, I would use a clear palette again, without land, without blacks, and only make landscapes, giving myself completely to the impressions I received from nature.
Darius of Regoyos, Survey on current trends in plastic arts

*Almonds in flower*, Darío de Regoyos (1905), Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga.

The artist manages to capture its movement without having to paint the locomotive, simply using the smoke that it left in its wake. The colors are muted, in keeping with the gloomy Basque climate. In The Almond Trees in Bloom Regoyos organizes the painting in horizontal friezes, using pointillism to capture the nature of the countryside. Although the focus is on the landscape, Regoyos always introduces human figures in these works that integrate perfectly with the landscape, especially in The Almond Trees in Blossom the red umbrella of the woman walking through the field. All of these examples are currently on display in the rooms of the Carmen Thyssen Málaga Museum.

Later Spanish artists will have him as a reference, both for his rebellion and for his work, such as Picasso, and writers of '98, such as Pío Baroja, for his attitude, and his color in Spain, black.

He has streets in his honor in Oviedo, Ribadesella, Bilbao, Durango, Irún, Rentería, Azuqueca de Henares and Cabezón de Pisuerga.