Painters

Laffitte Mesa, Irene

A painter from Gipuzkoa, born in San Sebastian on 7 August 1941, she belongs to a well-known family from San Sebastian.

She began her pictorial studies at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid and at the School of Arts and Crafts in San Sebastian. In 1952 he attended courses with Vicente Cobreros Uranga (San Sebastian), and later with Eduardo Pena (Madrid). In order to learn a personal technique he also attended the studios of the brothers Ramón and Antonio Pichoto, located in his native city. From 1951 to 1960 he began to exhibit in collective groups, winning several prizes. In 1961 he held his first personal exhibition in the Abril Art Galleries in Madrid, where he attracted attention for his vigour and colour. The following year he exhibited at the Club Guipúzcoa in San Sebastián and at the Illescas Gallery in Bilbao. The critic J. de B. of La Gaceta del Norte wrote on this occasion:

"Irene Laffitte's painting is very personal, very powerful and represents a truly surprising technical maturity in such a young artist".

That same year - 1962 - she settled in Paris, where she devoted her attention to the streets, rooftops, grey skies and other charms of the French capital. His first Parisian exhibition took place in 1963, at the Galerie des Jeunes (Saint-Germain). Jean Chavanon said of it:

"It resembles, although it has nothing of this author, the rough camp of Couty. The colour has the same charm - in lighter tones. The gesture is that of a worker, quick, skilful and always serious. An expressionist painter who does not force her character. She is good".

A year later she hung her vigorous spatula canvases in the Galaxia Galleries in Detroit (USA) and in 1969 again in Paris, in the Galerie aux Armes de Bretagne, deserving the following appreciation:

"The canvases presented by Irene Laffitte give proof of her concern for balance, vigour, construction. Some landscapes: Planton Corner, Saint-Germain-en-Laye Corner, Saint-Roch Church Corner, etc., are rather pretexts for a wise architectural work. Everything is meticulously ordered: the tiniest stroke, the smallest ray of light. He preferred to this technique the more extensive technique of toitures (roofs), where the buildings, one on top of the other, the cut roofs, are joined to the movement of the clouds, to their rhythm, to a powerful and muffled song. The vertical black masses, the lightness of the greys give this movement much flight, while the thickness of the paste gives it a certain realism.

In the summer of 1969 she visited San Sebastian, exhibiting her most recent paintings at San Telmo. It can be said that this painter is now in full possession of the technical and colouring resources - of which she perhaps abuses a little -; her platform is excellent for fearlessly launching herself in search of more daring forms of expression. In 1982 a fire destroyed her farmhouse-studio in Ordizia, burning all her belongings and work tools, which is why 27 Basque artists organised a disinterested exhibition in solidarity with the artist. On the occasion of her recent exhibition at the Caja Postal in San Sebastian, the critic E. Kortadi defined her as follows:

"Expressionism of a visceral and materialistic nature, related to a certain gesturalism, it reveals the primary, sensual and primitive emotion that the object causes in the artist's soul.... In his painting, the overflow is a constant in the material, the colour and in the forms themselves... Courageous, emphatic landscapes, full of successes and raw materials...".