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“I lived for more than 40 years with a foot on either side of the ocean, but my memory always returns to the sweet, Green mountains of the Basque Country, and the songs…,” the painter, Miguel Marina wrote in one of the last entries in his diary.  Exiled after the war in France, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and the US, his work reflects the nostalgia of thousands of expatriates.  Tomorrow, his exhibit “Icons of Memory,” a tour of his work, will be inaugurated in Bilbao

Bilbao, Bizkaia.   The Official College of Lawyers of Bizkaia will open the exhibit “Icons of Memory of the Basque Painter Miguel Marina,” with sponsorship from the University of Washington, the Basque Government and the BBK Foundation.  The inauguration will include a roundtable where the work and live of the painter from Bilbao will be discussed.

The roundtable will be moderated by Asier Vallejo, Director of the Basque Government’s Basque Community Abroad, with the participation of Noemi de Haro (Autonomous University of Madrid), Constance Marina, the painter’s daughter, and Anthony L. Geist (University of Washington).

Painter at the United Nations

Miguel Marina Barredo was born in Bilbao in 1915.  With the outbreak of the Civil War, he was named Captain of the Infantry in the Republican Army.  He spent the entire war on the front in the Basque Country and with the fall of Bilbao he went to Barcelona.  From there, at the end of the war, he found refuge in France, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and New York, where he would marry Madeline Cooper and where his daughter Constance was born.

He started painting in New York with another exile, Julio de Diego, before working as an assistant to Jose Vela Zanetti on the huge mural at the United Nations.  After several adventures that took him to Ecuador, a Mexican jail and Bilbao, he finally settled in California in 1959 where he could finally dedicate himself totally to painting.

Landscapes of Euskadi

Marina is a self-taught painter, with a very personal style.  He mainly paints on wood.  Even though three distinct phases of his work can be detected, all share certain characteristics, the use of strong primary colors that recall Gothic stained glass; elongated human figures, especially hands and faces that evoke both the Byzantine and Romanesque figures that confront the viewer; religious themes, specifically the Crucifixion and the Annunciation and the Last Supper; recreations of the landscapes of the Basque Copuntry that became more and more important as his work went along; a lyricism and emotion that crosses his entire work.

Marina held various exhibits at the Esther Bear Gallery in Santa Barbara, California but when the gallery owner retired in 1977, he was never exhibited again.  Nevertheless, from that time until the time of his death in 1989, he produced his most personal, intimate and profound works, with a greater emphasis on the landscapes of the Basque Country, the country of his memory.

One of the last entries of his diary read: “I remember Spain more and more and at the same time i want to forget it, i lived more than 40 years with one foot on either side of the ocean, but my memory always returns to the sweet, Green mountains of the Basque Country, and the songs… of Ochote Bilbaino, the festivals of Santa Agueda, where I sang alone with my baritone voice, in the streets of Bilbao, full of children that followed us all over….Soon I will be 74 and I will never return to by beloved Basque Country, that is why my paintings are like a giant mirage, my memories of my beloved country.”

A simple of his work is available here: miguelmarinaart.com.