Painter born in Ondarroa, Bizkaia, on 16 July 1937.
His vocation for painting awoke in him from a very early age. The numerous painters who came to do their work in the typical seaside spot attracted the attention of the young Beristain, who soon followed them, ing his extraordinary talent for drawing, first, and then for painting. During this time, Valentín de Zubiaurre honoured him with his friendship and gave invaluable advice to the teenager from Ondarroa, who was fascinated by composition and colour. At the age of 17 he exhibited for the first time in Eibar, encouraged by local enthusiasts. The same year, his hometown saw the first exhibition of the young Beristain's work. Around this time he also held an exhibition in Bilbao. Ondarroa Town Council offered him a scholarship to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which was withdrawn shortly afterwards on the grounds of lack of funds. Back to work, he exhibited in Bilbao, where, despite his youth, he was received favourably by the critics, who considered him a mature artist.
Exhibitions followed: 1959, Pau and Dax; 1960, Tarbes and Pau; 1961, Tarbes and San Sebastián; 1962, Vitoria; 1963, Eibar, Toulouse and Bordeaux. Guest of honour at the Salon "Violet de l'Association Nationale des Membres de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques". He has never taken part in competitions. It was a time of sombre tones and stark realism. Félix Beristain presents the vision of a sad costumbrismo, combining the gesticulating agitation of life and the inert pallor of death. It is his personal song in Viejas espulgándose, Pobres de Castilla, Vendedoras de pescado, Mendigo ciego, and a good number of paintings of barren and miserable landscapes. His subject matter is full of heart-rending humanism, always avoiding falling into excessively easy clichés. Some commentator called him - no doubt with more picturesqueness than reality - "the Unamuno of painting", a nickname that was soon picked up by a sector of the critics. Critics - especially French critics - found a marked Goyaesque influence in the artist. There are those who believe they can glimpse Buffet's imprint, undoubtedly due to the vigorous linear line that delimits the contours of the figures. Be that as it may, all agree on the affirmation of the genuine viewpoint from which the young Beristain projects the reflection of the miserable reality concealed by his personal mysticism.
Although he has been away from the exhibition halls since 1963, the artist from Ondarrota has produced a good number of paintings over the years, especially in Germany, the United States, Latin America, Italy and, above all, in the Basque Country. The murals that stand out in his latest production are exhibited in various banking and commercial establishments, official halls, etc., and can be seen throughout the whole of Biscay. Of particular interest, due to their revolutionary design, are those of the new Fishermen's Guild of Ondarroa, painted in oil on cement in relief, built by Beristain himself. Félix Beristain's new work is painted almost exclusively with a palette knife. His canvases are painstakingly worked: the strong impasto that he gives to his paintings is followed by a laborious ution, until the artist offers a perfect finish, from which emanates a singular expressive force. Driven by a tenacious search for new forms, his current artistic style is somewhere abstraction and figurativism. All this allows us to conceive a hopeful outcome, always backed by the unimpeachable artistic honesty of this remarkable painter. Update
In addition to the murals for the new Confraternity of Santa Clara in Ondarroa around 1968, Beristain carried out other works in the field of mural painting in different places in Bilbao, Gernika, some official centres in Ondarroa, the Town Hall and the Bank of Vizcaya. After this work, Beristain's exhibition work was interrupted for more than ten years. During this time, he only painted on commission until 1974, when he ed a solo exhibition at the Galería Arte in Bilbao. In the prologue to the catalogue, Juan Antonio Zubicaray tells us how the artist "... searches in the intimacy of the studio for the method and form that will lead him to a defining style". And he goes on to describe the change in his painting thus:
"His uninterrupted work as a muralist allows him the use of various materials, as well as imprinting on him a new conception of space, which he begins to use with a more studied freedom. The themes are the same as always, with a clear preference for work scenes, now enveloped in a serene and solid atmosphere. Light and colour take over a palette long accustomed to the range of blues and greys".
This is a post-cubist period in his painting. The Arrantzales, their clothing and surroundings, allowed him to delve deeper into this technique. He also painted landscapes of Huesca, Galicia and Castile, but especially of Ondarroa. From then on he took part in a few group exhibitions. At the end of 1978, after a brief stopover in Greece, he sailed up the Danube for almost a month. He improvised a studio on the boat and discovered the richness of the Moldavian greens, Romanian gypsies and other popular characters. By then, he had already visited Portugal for the first time, a country to which he returned regularly during these years. 1980 and 1987 he travelled to Morocco five times. In 1981 he moved to Jujuy (Argentina) and reproduced the route taken forty years earlier by the painter Arturo Acebal Idígoras. Attentive to the impressions he received, he developed the landscape genre more strongly than ever. After a series of trips to Paris and London, he travelled to Lantz (Navarrese Pyrenees) and Venice in 1988; he then tackled the theme of Carnival, which would become the central axis of his work for some time. In 1993 he ed at the Biosca Gallery in Madrid what he had seen in Argentina, Morocco, Ondarroa, Venice, London, Portugal and Nafarroa. Through his characters, maternities, beggars, arrantzales or masked people, he s us the diverse idiosyncrasies of the different countries, cultures and customs.He took part in several group exhibitions at the Arteta Gallery and worked for more than 20 years at the Espín Gallery in Bilbao. In 1994, an error in a surgical operation left serious after-effects on his right leg, which meant a hard recovery. He then moved from his native Ondarroa to Sarria in Araba, at the foot of Gorbea and worked slowly, recovering from his illness. In 1996 he exhibited at the Aitor Gallery in Vitoria and from that date onwards his work has been present in several group exhibitions at the Bay Sala and Tavira galleries in Bilbao, among others.