Eduardo Úrculo was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 Basque

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 pop art

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

ist who also worked in other art movements, including Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 and Neo-Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

. Both painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and sculptor, he is notable for his portrayals of luggage, the gentleman's hat, and the female bottom. With El Equipo Crónica (“Chronicle Team”), formed by the artists Manolo Valdés

Manolo Valdés

Manolo Valdés is a Spanish artist residing in New York, working in paint, sculpture, and mixed media. He introduced to Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony.- Biography :...

 and Rafael Solbes, Úrculo is considered one of the drivers of pop art in Spain.

Early years

Born in Santurtzi

Santurtzi

Santurtzi is a port town in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, Spain. It is located in the Bilbao Abra bay, near the mouth of the Nervión river, on its left bank, 14km downriver from Bilbao and forms part of the Greater Bilbao agglomeration...

, in Spain's Basque Country

Basque Country (autonomous community)

The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....

, Úrculo had at least two siblings, brothers Jose Maria Úrculo and Maria del Mar Úrculo. The family moved to the mining village of Langreo

Langreo

Langreo, , officially Llangréu / Langreo is a municipality of northern Spain, province of The Principality of Asturias....

, Asturias

Asturias

The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...

 in 1941 because of the hardships imposed on them after the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. With a childhood marked by famine,
he joined the Instituto de Enseñanza Media in 1948. His interest in drawing began here after Úrculo discovered the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

, Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

. and Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...

 in picture books.

At the age of 14, he dropped out of school to convalesce for several months from hepatitis

Hepatitis

Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"...

 and tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. During this time, he began to paint. When he was well enough, he started working in the mining company Carbones de La Nueva, where his father worked as a clerk.

Úrculo's first solo exhibition occurred in 1957 in La Felguera

La Felguera

La Felguera is the largest parish in the municipality of Langreo, Asturias, in the north of Spain, with 21.000 inhabitants. It is the fifth largest town in Asturias, after Gijón, Oviedo, Avilés and Mieres. It is an 18 minute drive by car to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias...

. In the same year, he became a cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

ist, drawing gangster comics

Comics

Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

 illustrations in Oviedo

Oviedo

Oviedo is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain. It is also the name of the municipality that contains the city....

. The following year, he received a grant from the Langreo City Council to study at Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

's
Círculo de Bellas Artes and at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas. Here, his spiky socialist realism

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

 was characterized by "lots of clenched fists and Guernica-style Picassoism". His drawings of factories have been described as "social painting" or "social expressionism". Úrculo's early black and white drawings were influenced by Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

. In 1958, he went to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere.

Career

Returning in 1959 to Oviedo, he opened a studio with the artist Zuco with whom he made the mosaic tile for ALSA

ALSA (bus company)

ALSA is a Spanish subsidiary of the UK company National Express Group, which operates bus and coach services in Spain and other countries across Europe, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia,...

. Military service took Úrculo to Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

 in 1960 where he became acquainted with the surrealist artist Eduardo Westerdahl

Eduardo Westerdahl

Eduardo Westerdahl was a Spanish painter, art critic and writer, and a member of the Surrealist Movement...

. Here he painted the only abstract

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 work of his career. In 1962, he returned to Paris and painted in the style of figurative expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

. Four years later, he went to Ibiza. In 1967, in Stockholm, he first encountered the American pop art of Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...

, and Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...

 which he described as "un flechazo" ("love at first sight"). He drew inspiration from this by incorporating vibrant color into his pieces.

In the 1970s, while traveling to Portugal, Morocco and Ibiza, Úrculo began his many works featuring the female nude. Referred to as Úrculo's "Period Erotica", he emphasied "el culo" (the backside). Culis monumentalibus (2001), a provocative and massive sculpture measuring 4 m (13.1 ft) in height, is located in Oviedo's square, and caused great controversy when it was installed.

Úrculo's first bronze sculpture was created in 1984, and others soon followed, such as Homenaje a Santiago Roldán ("Tribute to James Roldan", 1993, Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

's Olympic Village), El regreso de Williams B. Arrensberg ("The return of Williams B. Arrensberg", 1993, Oviedo), and Exaltación de la manzana ("Exaltation of the apple", 1996, Villaviciosa

Villaviciosa, Asturias

Villaviciosa is a town and in the autonomous community of Asturias, Spain. It is situated on the central eastern coastline, and borders the Asturian municipalities of Gijón and Siero to the west, Sariego, Nava, Cabranes and Piloña to the south and to Colunga to the east. The total area is 271 km²...

). However, his best-known bronze sculpture is El Viajero ("The Traveller", 1992). Depicting bags, cases, a coat, hat and an umbrella, it is located in Madrid Atocha railway station, giving an opportunity for passengers to stand or sit on the sculpture.

Returning to Cubism, he painted still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

s of bottles, cases, and fruit in the manner of Juan Gris

Juan Gris

José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...

.

In his later years, he painted geisha

Geisha

, Geiko or Geigi are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.-Terms:...

s using eastern iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

, both as romantic escapism

Escapism

Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...

 and as a sexual icon. He participated in the First Biennial of Art in the City of Oviedo and, in 1986, was honored at the Painting Contest of Luarca

Luarca

Luarca is one of 15 parroquias and the capital in the municipality of Valdes, in Asturias, Spain. Situated at an elevation of above sea level, it has a population of 5,354 , and an area of . The village is from the capital, Oviedo. The Nobel laureate for medicine in 1959, Severo Ochoa, was...

. His last individual exhibitions were held at the Fundación Marcelino Botin of Santander

Santander, Cantabria

The port city of Santander is the capital of the autonomous community and historical region of Cantabria situated on the north coast of Spain. Located east of Gijón and west of Bilbao, the city has a population of 183,446 .-History:...

 and in the gallery Teresa Square, in Valladolid

Valladolid

Valladolid is a historic city and municipality in north-central Spain, situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three wine-making regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales...

 (2000). In addition to Spain, his works were displayed at expositions, collections and biennials in Germany, France, Cuba, Iran, and the United States.

Personal life

The marriage to his first wife, Annie Chanvallon, was dissolved. He married secondly Victoria Hidalgo. He had one son, Yoann.

Úrculo died of a heart attack in 2003 at the Madrid home of Salvador Dalí, and was buried at the Iglesia de San Juan el Real in Oviedo.

Honors

• Úrculo was to have received Spain's highest artistic honor, the Gold Medal in Fine Arts, in the summer of 2003.
• The Pinacoteca Eduardo Úrculo
  Pinacoteca Eduardo Úrculo
  The Pinacoteca Eduardo Úrculo is an arts center and municipal art gallery located on Calle La Union in La Felguera, Langreo, Asturias, Spain specializing in the period of the Spanish Civil War . It opened in 27 April 2007 and was formed by the Langreo City Council with donations from the Cultural...
  
  , an arts center and municipal art gallery, is located in La Felguera.
• Plaza Eduardo Úrculo, located in Oviedo, opened June 2003. It was designed by the architect Cesar Fernandez Cuevas.

Displayed works

His works are on display at:

• Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid
• Bullfighting Museum, Madrid
• City of Oviedo
• Coleccion de Arte Contemporaneo de AENA, Madrid
• Drawing Museum "Castillo de Larre "Huesca
• Galieria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
• International Museum of Contemporary Art in Lanzarote
• International Museum of the Resistance Salvador Allende, Chile
• Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo
• Museo Municipal, Madrid
• Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
• Museum of Contemporary Art ACA, Tenerife
• Museum of Contemporary Art in Villafames, Castellon
• Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogota, Colombia
• Museum of Contemporary Spanish Engravings, Marbella
• National Museum of Bangladesh, Dhaka
• Sculpture Museum, Alcala de Henares, Madrid