BILBAO.- One of the most important actions in the 2024 campaign of the Iberdrola-Museum Conservation and Restoration Programme—the first was Berruguete’s The Annunciation, unveiled on 21 May—was the conservation treatment applied to eighteen of the 27 paintings comprising the mural Euskadi (1977–1979) by Agustín Ibarrola (Bilbao, 1930–Galdakao, Bizkaia, 2023), recently loaned to the museum for a ten-year period (commodatum) by the artist’s children.

This treatment allowed for not only the material recovery of this iconic work of contemporary Basque art but also the documentary reconstruction of the original installation that Ibarrola created in 1979 for the museum’s former Grey Room. These eighteen works, now held on deposit at the museum, are displayed following restoration along with six additional paintings that the artist included in the original installation in the Grey Room: four from Ibarrola’s Guernica (c.1977), acquired by the museum in 2021, and two others donated by the painter that same year. The remaining three paintings that would complete the original set of 27 are still missing.

The conservation and restoration treatment was coordinated by Jon Apodaca, a Conservation and Restoration specialist, while Miriam Alzuri, the Modern and Contemporary Art Curator, was in charge of reconstructing the documents.

The photographer Patxi Cobo was also enlisted to restore the images of the installation—whose original photographs have not survived—published in the brochures of two exhibitions that Ibarrola held in Barakaldo and Sestao in 1980.

Finally, the sculptor Txomin Badiola also participated with the text titled ‘Euskadi. An installation of Ibarrola at the limit’, which is included in Notebook 6, a booklet issued by the museum for the occasion, accompanied by a host of illustrations and images of the original installation at the museum in 1979.

Agustín Ibarrola. Euskadi

In 1979, one year after the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country entered into force, Ibarrola created a large mural made up of 27 paintings, twelve of them measuring 2 x 3.5 m, in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum’s Grey Room.

With a kind of preamble made up of four wall paintings and eight ‘totem’ paintings resting on the ground somewhat away from the wall, the main part of the installation totally covered the walls in a succession of large paintings that articulated the whole. In the centre, a painting with an oak leaf and text reinforced the symbolism of the work, which was further enhanced by themes drawn from Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and four fragments from Ibarrola’s version (c.1977) of this celebrated painting.

The tension between formal abstraction and figurative representation relates figures and objects from the world of manual labour—from traditional crafts to industry—violently disturbed by black and white lines that represent the oppressive experience of the nine years that Ibarrola spent in prison because of his membership in the Communist Party of Spain. Scales, perspectives and forced shadows confine figures in a kind of expressive mechanism of protest, affirming both art and the artist as social agents in the service of democracy.

Conservation and Restoration Treatment

Between October 2024 and February 2025, a meticulous conservation and restoration treatment was performed with the goal of reinfusing the works with the essence of the iconic 1979 installation. The treatment not only guaranteed the structural stability of the whole but also revitalised its visual and artistic impact after years in storage.

The treatment was led by museum restorer Jon Apodaca with the assistance of Aitziber Iturriaga. An exhaustive study with ultraviolet light confirmed the presence of varnish in specific areas and areas retouched by the artist himself, which yielded a better understanding of the evolution of the works.

To ensure the precision of the treatment, prior analyses were performed in conjunction with Larco Química y Arte, S.L. of Madrid and TSA of Durango. The results provided key information on the supports and colours, in addition to detecting the presence of metallic soaps on the surface of some works.

The deformations of the supports were corrected, and new stretchers were installed in some pieces to improve their stability.

Regarding the polychrome, the surface dirt was cleaned and the aged varnish was removed. The stains caused by fungi and metallic soaps were treated, areas at risk of detaching were consolidated and the areas with missing colour were filled so they could later be reintegrated with water-based and varnish-based paintings.

As a finishing touch, the perimeters of the works were protected with cotton bands, replacing the traditional pine wood slats. This decision not only preserves the integrity of the pieces but also provides a neater and more refined finish.

Agustín Ibarrola (Bilbao, 1930-Usansolo, Bizkaia, 2023)

Born to a working-class family, Ibarrola lived through the Spanish Civil War as a child, an experience that marked his life history. In 1945, he entered the Bilbao Arts and Crafts School at the tender age of fourteen, and three years later, in 1948, he held his first solo exhibition at the Sala Stvdio in Bilbao. That same year he moved to Madrid to pursue training at the San Fernando Fine Arts College. However, he was unable to enrol because he was lacking formal education, so for two years he attended the studio of the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz, who was closely connected to the Basque art scene at the time and a major influence on Ibarrola.

In 1950, Jorge Oteiza invited him to paint a mural in the Arantzazu basilica (Oñati, Gipuzkoa), although the job was never executed. In 1954, he travelled around Castilla with the poet Blas de Otero. In 1956, he moved to Paris, where he served as the secretary of the Association of Spanish Artists and met the fellow artists with whom he later created the artistic collective Equipo 57. He returned to Bilbao in 1961 and joined the Basque section of Estampa Popular as an engraver. He was arrested for being a member of the Communist Party in 1962 and sentenced by a military court to nine years in prison. He continued painting while incarcerated and, one year later, his works were shown in a travelling exhibition in London, Paris, Belgium, Germany and Italy promoted by Appeal for Amnesty. In 1965, he was released and helped to create the avant-garde Basque art groups Gaur, Emen, Orain and Danok. He was imprisoned again from 1967 to 1969, and upon release he joined the Deba Experimental Art School that Oteiza had created that same year. After that, he participated in Basque art initiatives, like the First Basque Art Exhibition of Barakaldo (Bizkaia) in 1971—known as ‘la Indiscriminada’—and the Pamplona Art Encounters of 1972.

In 1976, he displayed his works at the Venice Biennale, and one year later he painted the mural Guernica, a large narrative frieze ten metres long as a tribute to Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and a contribution to the movement that was calling for the painting’s return to the Basque Country.

In the early 1980s, he served as a professor at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of the Basque Country for five years. In 1987, the Ministry of Culture and Madrid Town Hall organised an anthological exhibition of his works which travelled to Zaragoza and Bilbao. During those years, he worked on artistic interventions in nature, experimenting with different materials (railway ties, cardboard, sticks, cast iron, weathering steel, etc.). El bosque animado de Oma [The Animated Oma Forest] (1983–1987), located near the prehistoric caves of Santimamiñe and his farmhouse, became one of the most famous works in his career.

Since the 1990s, Basque institutions have commissioned him to make several public sculptures. In 1993, he received the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts along with the members of Equipo 57 and was invited by the University of Salamanca to create the Bosque de olmos secos [Dry Elm Forest] (1995–1996). He partnered with RENFE to display his series made with railway ties in several Spanish cities in 1997. Ibarrola’s other celebrated artistic interventions in nature include Piedras y árboles [Stones and Trees] (1999) in Allariz (Ourense), Los cubos de la memoria [The Cubes of Memory] (2001–2006) in Llanes (Asturias), the Bottrop auditorium (Germany) (2002) and Piedras Ibarrola [Ibarrola Stones] in the Garoza de Bracamonte meadow (Muñogalindo, Ávila) (2005–2009). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, he spoke out as an antiterrorist activist and donated numerous sculptures in homage to the victims of ETA in cities like Santander, Andoain (Gipuzkoa), Ermua (Bizkaia), Vitoria, Logroño, Alicante and Murcia. Limited by his health, Ibarrola still maintained his creative impulse and disciplined work ethic at his farmhouse in Oma (Kortezubi, Bizkaia), where he moved with his family in the 1980s. He died in Usansolo (Bizkaia) on 17 November 2023.