Ignacio García Ergüín is one of the most representative Basque painters of the second half of the 20th century. In 1951 he left the priesthood to study Painting and Drawing at the Union School under José Lorenzo Solís. From 1950 to 1960 he produced figurative works including still-lifes, portraits and landscapes painted from life in his home town and later in Cuenca, Toledo, Granada, Castro Urdiales and Bermeo. In 1961 he obtained a grant from Iberduero electricity company to study at the Bildenden Künste Akademie in Munich, where he came into contact with German Expressionism and more specifically with the work of Anselm Kiefer. In 1966 he received an award from the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation. In that same year he founded the Emen group along with José María de Ucelay, Agustín Ibarrola and Pelayo Olaortúa, seeking to renew Basque visual arts. Since then Ergüín has produced works marked by the depiction of movement, expressive combinations of colour and a tendency to blur forms. His themes are mainly the coastal landscape (especially the town of Bermeo), the plateau of Castile, popular traditions and festivities such as bullfighting, the world of jazz (which he discovered in Barcelona in the 1980s) and commissions from the football club Athletic Club de Bilbao. From 1990 to 1992 he was commissioned by the Arriaga Theatre in Bilbao to produce sets for the opera Carmen.

At the age of just 24 he won the Education and Rest National Award for Painting (Madrid, 1958). His first solo exhibition was at the Sala Arthogar in Bilbao (1960). It was followed by shows at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1961 & 1966), International House in New Orleans, USA (1972), the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (1990), the Egon von Kameke Museum in Potsdam, Germany (1994) and a continual presence at galleries in Spain and abroad. The Sala Ondare gallery in Bilbao staged an anthology of his work in 2017. In 2004 he was awarded the honorary title of 'illustrious son of Bilbao'.

Roberto Díaz