BASQUE LUXURY FIRM: ZUMETA

Known primarily as a painter, Jose Luis Zumeta also showed interest for other artistic disciplines over his more than 60-year career. In the field of design, the posters he made for different popular events are quite well known, as well as his emblematic album and book covers – always linked to Basque culture. In the seventies, he also worked in sculpture, convinced that his artistic career would develop around volume and form. Those were years of great production in which he experimented with materials such as wood, metal, and ceramics, with public and private sculptures in said materials remaining to this day.

One of his most noteworthy and ambitious projects was precisely the large ceramic tile wall measuring 145 m² and located on the back side of the wall of the fronton court in Usurbil (Gipuzkoa). With no prior knowledge of this technique, Zumeta took on this great project alone – a project that he would carry out between April of 1973 and April of 1974. Starting with an abstract painting of a medium size (1:15 scale) which he used as a sketch, he not only uncompromisingly managed to transmit the image’s visual language to the enormous wall but he also took full advantage of the possibilities that the ceramic tiles offered him, adding volume to the piece and, thus, achieving a truly powerful result.

The 50^th anniversary of this piece’s creation and its recent restoration allow us to approach and rediscover another facet of one of the most beloved and admired painters of the Basque Country.

Usoa Zumeta Sanz

Manager of Zumeta Art Studio