Basque painter Enrique Albizu was born in eastern Spain, where his father, a railway forge worker, was employed at the time. He spent his childhood in Madrid and his family moved to Irun at the end of the Spanish Civil War. He studied at the Irun School of Drawing, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia and the Madrid Royal Academy of Fine Arts from the mid- to late 1940s. He was awarded the Carmen del Río Foundation and Molina Higueras Foundation prizes. In 1951, Albizu travelled to Italy on a Gipuzkoa Provincial Council scholarship. He took part in the I Hispano-American Art Biennial in Madrid. In 1955, he was awarded a French Institute grant and moved to Paris. He lived in Venezuela between 1956 and 1960. His paintings are in the collections of the San Telmo Museum of Donostia/San Sebastián, the Caja Laboral Popular in Madrid and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, to name but a few venues. In 1994, the Kutxa Foundation organised a retrospective of his work in San Sebastián.
Albizu was a realist painter who specialised in portraits and in iconographies featuring seafarers. However, his work lacks the picturesqueness typical of Costumbrismo, and he depicts popular figures with a dignity and presence similar to those found in the work of Zuloaga and Vázquez Díaz. However, his painting seems to be more technically related to the work of Darío de Regoyos. Family of the Sea (1977) is a perfect example of his work. Albizu has created an allegory of arrantzales [Basque fishermen] that recalls a frieze. Three Basque fishermen carrying their oars are accompanied by a woman, a fish seller holding a basket with fish. The upper part of the painting shows how work was divided by gender in fishing families, Albizu completes the allegory with two more portraits in the bottom left corner: one of a child holding a toy boat and the other of Larrauri, a character that he also painted in other works. These symbolise childhood as the future and old age as wisdom and respect for tradition.
Basque painter Enrique Albizu was born in eastern Spain, where his father, a railway forge worker, was employed at the time. He spent his childhood in Madrid and his family moved to Irun at the end of the Spanish Civil War. He studied at the Irun School of Drawing, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia and the Madrid Royal Academy of Fine Arts from the mid- to late 1940s. He was awarded the Carmen del Río Foundation and Molina Higueras Foundation prizes. In 1951, Albizu travelled to Italy on a Gipuzkoa Provincial Council scholarship. He took part in the I Hispano-American Art Biennial in Madrid. In 1955, he was awarded a French Institute grant and moved to Paris. He lived in Venezuela between 1956 and 1960. His paintings are in the collections of the San Telmo Museum of Donostia/San Sebastián, the Caja Laboral Popular in Madrid and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, to name but a few venues. In 1994, the Kutxa Foundation organised a retrospective of his work in San Sebastián.
Albizu was a realist painter who specialised in portraits and in iconographies featuring seafarers. However, his work lacks the picturesqueness typical of Costumbrismo, and he depicts popular figures with a dignity and presence similar to those found in the work of Zuloaga and Vázquez Díaz. However, his painting seems to be more technically related to the work of Darío de Regoyos. Family of the Sea (1977) is a perfect example of his work. Albizu has created an allegory of arrantzales [Basque fishermen] that recalls a frieze. Three Basque fishermen carrying their oars are accompanied by a woman, a fish seller holding a basket with fish. The upper part of the painting shows how work was divided by gender in fishing families, Albizu completes the allegory with two more portraits in the bottom left corner: one of a child holding a toy boat and the other of Larrauri, a character that he also painted in other works. These symbolise childhood as the future and old age as wisdom and respect for tradition.