Painter and draftsman. Born in Torrelavega on December 23, 1902, he passed away on September 19, 1973.
Around the age of eight, he entered the School of Arts and Crafts of Torrelavega, becoming the youngest student ever admitted. Masterful drawings from this period have been preserved. From childhood, the human figure became the central concern of his artistic interest. At thirteen, he left primary school and began working—first as a laboratory assistant in a sugar factory, and later in a photography studio, until the age of seventeen, when he moved (in 1920) to Madrid. He enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando while trying to make a living through various trades. He frequented artists’ circles and gatherings, where he met Victorio Macho, Barral, and Cristóbal Ruiz; he visited museums, spending long hours at the Prado Museum. He immersed himself—alone and thoroughly—in the direct study of the great classical tradition of Spanish painting.
In 1923, he settled in Bilbao, where he began drawing at night at the Arts and Crafts School, in Federico Sáez’s life drawing class, during a period of great splendor for the institution. He became part of a prestigious group of students that included sculptors Ricardo Iñurria, Arturo Acebal, Joaquín Lucarini, and Tomás Martínez Arteaga; the draftsman Luis García Gallo ("Coq"); and painters Nicolás Martínez Ortiz, Protasio Sáez, Ajuria Maidagán, and Julio Infante, among others. Constantly in financial precarity, Párraga had to rely on photo plate retouching to survive.
In 1930, he moved to Paris. He drew and painted in the typical “academies,” where “for three francs, you could stay for two hours sketching a live model in ten or twelve different poses.” He also painted small oil sketches on the streets and spent long periods in the Louvre and other modern art museums, immersing himself deeply and admiringly in Impressionism. Once again, he worked as a photo retoucher. But his financial situation became increasingly unsustainable. Meanwhile, the historical moment in Spain was becoming more and more compelling to him. So, in April 1932, he returned to Bilbao “with my baggage of artistic and human experiences—mostly human—considerably enriched, but very tired of constantly struggling with poverty, and with my passion for painting much diminished,” as the painter wrote. “So much so,” he continued, “that I practically didn’t pick up a brush again until 1939 in Valencia, where the circumstances of our war took me.”
He lived the political situation of the time intensely and participated in the October Revolution of 1934. He was arrested several times. Upon his final release, he learned he had been expelled from the Communist Party by decision of the local committee. His political experience appeared to have ended in failure. He returned to his much-demanded job as a photo retoucher. He resumed charcoal drawing, returned to the human figure, and sold a few portraits. He was often seen at the Arriaga café’s evening gatherings. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the militias. In the trenches, a delegation from the Unified Socialist Youth visited him, encouraging him to make posters. Until the fall of Bilbao, he painted about a dozen posters. According to Llanos, they were “aggressive and clean in form, nuanced in color and with a fine realism that was always a visible hallmark of Ciriaco Párraga’s verist themes.” He also contributed drawings to Joven Guardia. These posters were displayed throughout the North, from Gipuzkoa to Asturias. One even included a self-portrait with a gesturing expression. At that time, Párraga began to see muralism as a central artistic medium—an ambition interrupted by the course of the war.
In mid-1937, he was captured and imprisoned for a time in the Santoña penal colony. He was then assigned to a war prisoner battalion and moved through the provinces of Castellón, Teruel, and Zaragoza. In 1938, he met Lieutenant Doctor Manuel Artero, became friends with him, and painted an oil portrait—his first major work in what would become his late-starting professional career. When the war ended, he was released in Valencia in May 1939. After nearly a year in that city, where he painted a dozen “heads” and about six oil paintings, he moved to Zaragoza in March 1940. There, influential figures who had seen the portraits he painted while imprisoned recognized his “exceptional talent,” and he began receiving numerous commissions.
Párraga remained in Zaragoza for two and a half years, working intensely with the support of Jalón Ángel, who had only seen the portrait of Dr. Artero before meeting him but became his patron, securing commissions and even lending him a studio. This feverish period resulted in the painter’s first two exhibitions: February 1941 and May 1942. For the first, Párraga selected 23 works—seven charcoal heads, thirteen oil portraits, and three still lifes; for the second, 22 works—four heads, six portraits, eleven landscapes, and one still life. These were his first ventures into landscape: sketches in Zaragoza and along the Ebro 1940–1941, and more complete oils from the Aragonese Pyrenees (Sallent, Panticosa, and Valle de Tena) in winter–spring 1942. Later that year, he also painted in Calcena (Zaragoza) and Castellote (Teruel). After finishing a few more portraits, he left Zaragoza—his warm and welcoming city, which he would never forget—and returned to his beloved Bilbao with his wife and son (November 1942).
He created new charcoal heads, painted some portraits, a few interior genre compositions, still lifes, and landscapes. He explored the surroundings of Bilbao: 1943 and 1945, he painted landscapes of Pagasarri, La Peña, La Ola, Larrasquitu, and Begoña. There was a brief interlude in 1944, when, invited by the University of Zaragoza, he traveled there to paint several portraits, a trip he continued to his hometown of Torrelavega, where he painted his beloved former teacher, Don Hermilio. 1946 and 1947, he produced landscapes in Elorrio, Algorta, La Ribera, Santurce, and Buya. In January 1945, he held his first exhibition in Bilbao at the Delsa Gallery, ing thirty works. He participated in the Provincial Fine Arts Exhibitions of Basque painters in 1945 and 1946, winning the gold medal from the Provincial Council of Biscay. In November 1946, he held his second solo exhibition in Bilbao at the Alonso Gallery, displaying thirty-five works. In May 1947, he participated in a group exhibition sponsored by the Provincial Council and City Hall of Bilbao, alongside previous medal winners from the Fine Arts Provincial Exhibitions, each exhibiting six works: Antonio Merino, Bay-Sala, Párraga, and Largacha. 1947 was the year of his only self-portrait in oil, and of the oil figures of Francisca, the Andalusian woman—“the most interesting model” among the few he had.
In the next phase, we witness a significant leap in the quality of his painting and a progressive maturation in his artistic journey—an impetuous progression. His first exhibition in Madrid took place in October 1947 at the Vilches Gallery, featuring twenty-seven works. He stayed in the capital for half a year, painting four important nudes. During short trips to Arenas de San Pedro, he painted several landscapes in the Sierra de Gredos. His first and only exhibition in Barcelona came in May 1948 at the Busquets Gallery, where he sold his best large-scale nude painted in Madrid. With the proceeds from that outstanding sale, he was able to travel with his family to Mallorca, where he spent four months in intense production: around twenty landscapes, medium- and large-sized, painted in Palma de Mallorca, Génova, Deyá, and Cala Figuera. He returned to Bilbao in October 1948 and exhibited at the Arte Gallery in November, with thirty-three works. His second exhibition in Madrid came in early March 1949, again at the Vilches Gallery, with a selection similar to the latest Bilbao , including newer landscapes from Mutriku (Gipuzkoa).
Throughout this tireless period 1947 and 1949—marked by constant travel galleries and towns for exhibitions and painting, all amid the silent, urgent struggle for subsistence—Ciriaco Párraga occasionally accepted portrait commissions, usually in Bilbao, trips. Notably, the Madrid Nudes and Mallorca Landscapes marked fundamental milestones in his artistic development. In the former, he approached the full expression of the human figure; in the latter, he reached a powerful expression of what would later become his main contribution to art history: mastery in landscape painting.
By late March 1949, he was completing what would become his first true masterpiece—perhaps second in time, if we count Woman Reading, the Madrid nude—his fourth figure painting since We Lost the War, portraying his wife Amaya Julia Tello. In July of that year, Párraga was invited by the City Council of Torrelavega to participate in the First Exhibition of Montañés Art, held in August, where he received first prize.
That autumn of 1949, Ciriaco Párraga encountered Don Ernesto Ercoreca Régil, former mayor of Bilbao before the war. Impressed by the 83-year-old’s imposing presence, he painted what would become his best portrait to date and his third masterpiece. The portrait earned him a third medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition of Madrid in 1950 and was temporarily displayed in the Museum of Seville. By the end of 1949, after ten intense years of patient maturation and personal development, Párraga could already be considered a true master of figure painting. The year 1950 would consolidate those achievements—but also bring intense activity. In addition to some charcoal heads (a genre he never abandoned, though its relative importance gradually diminished), he painted several still lifes and commissioned portraits. Among the highlights: Matía Was Not a Sailor, a figure steeped in sorrow, leaning sadly against a parapet with a fishing boat in the background; Study of a Woman, Párraga’s last nude, a dramatic portrayal of the social condition of women; a dozen autumn landscapes of Bolívar (Biscay); and, in May of that year, his monumental portrait Don Resurrección María de Azcue, painted in the distinguished philologist and musicologist’s home office-library.
In 1952, he painted fourteen landscapes of Paris during the months of May and June. Among them, several works—finally—stood out as evident and definitive masterpieces of the genre. The significant geographic changes in light and setting increasingly provoked substantial qualitative transformations in his journey toward artistic excellence in landscape painting. Earlier, in January, he had also painted several landscapes in Oñati (Gipuzkoa). these two trips, he held his fourth exhibition in Bilbao, at the Arte Gallery in mid-March: twenty-five works. In the fall of that same year, he presented his third exhibition in Madrid, with thirty canvases at the Altamira Gallery. December 1952 and March 1953, he produced some charcoal drawings and several large commissioned portraits. He held exhibitions in March in Santander and in April in Vitoria—his first and only exhibitions in those cities.
In July 1953, he created what was then his most important work: a large-scale interior scene, backlit and layered with chairs, a laundry basket, a disordered table, and a sewing machine—his wife sewing and his son reading by the window. This piece is extraordinarily significant in the painter’s biography, not only for its quality but also because it marks the culmination of a rich and intense period of artistic maturity. Coinciding with his departure from figurative composition, Párraga began a long stage of work during which a new kind of painting slowly interwove itself with his steady production of plein air landscapes: the studio landscape.
1954 was the year of his first two major studio landscapes: Soto de Cameros, a remote village in La Rioja. It was also the year of his great and definitive leap forward in the use of color to treat light and atmosphere in landscape painting, particularly through the Elantxobe series. This evolution, curiously, was picked up by only one Bilbao art critic—L. de A., writing in El Correo Español–El Pueblo Vasco, on the occasion of Párraga’s fifth exhibition in Bilbao in November 1954. That year, he also painted some heads and a few portraits.
1955 marked the affirmation of his full artistic maturity, with a series of landscapes from Mundaka and his first works in Bermeo. He also produced some studio landscapes (one from Begoña and one from Elantxobe), several heads, and a few portraits. In 1956, he created a series of splendid landscapes of Ondarroa, various still lifes, and some portraits. Notably, 1954 and 1956, he completed a series of eight monographic natural landscapes painted from the window of his studio and other parts of his home, such as the farmhouses of Larrazabal, Vía Vieja de Lezama, and the Zurbaran neighborhood.
In 1957, he traveled to Gran Canaria, where he held his first and only exhibition in Las Palmas, ing twenty-seven works. He traveled, did some sightseeing, and painted a small series of seven landscapes in Las Palmas, Tejeda, Benegueras, and Arguineguín. He also drew several heads. He returned to Bilbao in mid-year and produced landscapes of Mañaria and Izurza. In mid-December of the same year, he mounted his sixth exhibition in Bilbao, once again at the Arte Gallery, presenting twenty-four works.
On March 23, 1958, inspectors from Madrid's Political-Social Flying Brigade raided the painter’s home and arrested him. After a summary trial by a military court, he was sentenced to three years in prison. He passed through the prisons of Zaragoza and Huesca and was finally transferred to the Penal Colony of Burgos in March 1959. There, he drew several charcoal heads of fellow inmates and, finally, produced an outstanding portrait: Poet Marcos Ana, then a thirty-six-year-old man who had been imprisoned for twenty-one years. He had been sentenced to death in his youth and edly removed from his cell for ution, only to be spared. On June 9, 1959, the painter was released.
Upon his return, he painted a commissioned portrait that helped his family get by. He produced a landscape series in Pedernales and another significant series in Bermeo. He increased his output during the second half of 1959 and, in December, held his seventh exhibition in Bilbao, at the Arte Gallery.
1960 was a year of various portraits, some charcoal heads, landscapes in Sepúlveda (Segovia), and several still lifes. 1961 was an important turning point: that summer, for the first time, he ventured into the Castilian landscape, creating an outstanding series in Castrogeriz (Burgos), which included a major charcoal head: Castilian Peasant Woman. Shortly after returning to Bilbao, he painted another shorter but equally high-quality landscape series in Getaria.
In January 1962, he held his eighth exhibition in Bilbao, again at the Arte Gallery. It was a year of calm. He traveled for study through various Basque towns, from Castro Urdiales to Bermeo and the industrial basin of the Bilbao estuary. He especially focused on studio landscapes, producing some of his most accomplished works in this genre: Castro Urdiales, Bermeo II, and the beginnings of Bermeo III, along with several portraits. The following year, he returned to Madrid after more than a decade and held his fourth solo exhibition there (Eureka Gallery).
In 1965, a significant new chapter began in his landscape work: he explored the Arratia Valley in depth, painting scenes in Igorre—even reaching Dima—as well as Areatza and Zeberio. The series that emerged from this exploration offered a serious and committed interpretation of the Basque landscape. In 1967, he continued with a long series of landscapes of the Arratia Valley. The painter was deeply satisfied with what he felt was a revelation—the green tones of the Biscayan countryside in recent years. By then, he had long since stopped caring about critics. He painted in Artea, Areatza, Dima, Zeberio, and made a quick excursion to Orozko. He also completed a few portraits.