Ramiro ARRUE (1892-1971) - Lot 340

Ramiro ARRUE (1892-1971) Pelota game in Bidart Oil on panel signed lower left 46 x 55 cm Bidart's square, Place Sauveur Atchoarena, is the beating heart of the village. Its organization around the triptych of church, pediment and town hall is characteristic of village squares in the Basque country. Ramiro Arrue sometimes composes scenes in an imaginary landscape. Here, he has chosen to depict a perfectly identifiable place, animated by a pelota game attended by a large number of spectators. From an aesthetic point of view, the artist used the surrounding architecture to propose a tight framing, marked by geometric shapes, which reinforce the artist's modernist, cubist style. The Bidart pediment still bears the various dates of its transformation. Built in 1869, it was successively raised in 1912 and 1925. The arrival of rubber in Europe and the standardization of pelota rules in 1921 led to modifications to the pediments, the results of which can still be seen on the back of the Bidart pediment. Ramiro Arrue, a great pelota player, may well have wanted to immortalize these transformations. The absence of plane trees in front of the church and the presence of a small adjacent building are also markers of the date of completion of our work. Kept for three generations in a collection in Biarritz, this work is unprecedented on the art market. The artist's archives indicate that it was sold in 1953.