Tierz (Huesca)

Tierz (Huesca)

  • 1985
  • Oil on canvas
  • 76 x 180 cm
  • Cat. P_381
  • Acquired in 1988
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Many of the pictures painted by José Beulas throughout his life reflect the silent, barren landscape of the southern part of the province of Huesca, an area that the Catalan artist first encountered when he did his military service there. The bare fields were a striking contrast to the lush vegetation of the La Selva region of Girona where Beulas was born, and must have left a great impression on him. In later life, he moved back to Huesca, where he died in 2017 at an advanced age. Indeed, he played a leading role in setting up and running the Huesca CDAN (Centre of Art and Nature). The Banco de España Collection has nine of his landscapes, most painted in Aragon. Stubble (1984) is a good example of Beulas' oeuvre. Depicting a winter landscape, with a leaden sky and a lofty horizon, it offers a small detail of the immense countryside of Huesca. In painting this field of burnt stubble, the artist consciously limits his palette to a small range of greys, earths and whites. As Beulas himself once remarked, 'a landscape is not an exact reproduction of nature, but rather the impressions that have penetrated deeply into one's soul on contemplating that nature'.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
José Beulas
Santa Coloma de Farnés (Girona) 1921 - Huesca 2017

José Beulas worked exclusively as a landscape painter. As a child he met painters from the school of Olot (close to his home town), sparking an early interest in painting. In the early 1940s he completed his military service in Huesca. He became enamoured of the local landscape and decide to become a full-time painter. In 1947 he obtained a scholarship from the Provincial Government of Huesca to study under Vázquez Díaz at the San Fernando School of Fine Art in Madrid. In 1955 he won another scholarship to the Spanish Academy in Rome. He stayed in Italy for five years, where he was deeply impressed by Giorgio Morandi and his concept of painting. In 1960 he returned to Madrid, and thereafter he focused his work on landscape, marked by the horizon. In 1969 he decided to move to Huesca. There he painted the fields of the Aragon uplands, the vineyards of Cariñena and the drylands of Los Monegros, synthesizing their essence between the natural and the cultural. The noughties saw a transformation in his work, with strong sunlight flooding the landscape. In the early 1990s, Beulas had decided to donate his art collection to the city of Huesca. He founded the Beulas Art and Nature Centre Foundation, in a building designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 2006.

His work has been shown at important international events, including the Venice Biennale (1957-1959) and, since the 1960s, in major galleries in Spain and abroad. Beulas won the First Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition of 1968. In 1988 the Provincial Government of Huesca staged an exhibition of his work and in 1996 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Roberto Díaz

 
«Beulas: Opening Horizons» (Huesca, 2009-2010).
Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Julián Gállego & María José Alonso Colección de pintura del Banco de España, Madrid, Banco de España, 1988. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.