A painter of essences: Hugo Irureta in search of the Latin American being

From the streets of La Boca to the northern landscapes, Hugo Irureta's work surpasses time and space, with its mix of technical virtuosity and commitment to the identity and culture of his country.

In May 1977, within the framework of the LIV Annual Salon of Santa Fe, a jury met for the painting section, in which Eduardo Ballari, Ana Maria Pizarro participated and with the presidency of the director of the Museum, Nydia Pereyra Salva de Impini ( which fulfilled similar functions in the other sections), awarded the Provincial Government acquisition prize to Hugo Irureta for his oil painting “The table”. The specialists valued the “placid construction and skillful assembly of ochers and earth, which shows a refined craft,” according to the edition of El Litoral corresponding to Tuesday, May 24, 1977.
Irureta was born in 1928, but the first flashes of his pictorial genius became visible in 1949, when he exhibited in national and international salons. In 1964, his career took an important turn when he received a scholarship from the Institute of Hispanic Culture to undertake a further training trip through Spain, Italy and France.
Irureta not only stood out for his technical virtuosity, but also for his commitment to the identity and culture of his country. His first productions were steeped in the landscapes of La Boca, but over time his gaze shifted to the northern stages, where he sought to capture the original identity features of the region. This artistic evolution culminated in a stage marked by the construction of a personal Indo-Americanism, where the cultural roots of Latin America are intertwined with the unique vision of the artist.
It is worth quoting a few words that El Tribuno de Jujuy dedicated to him, a province that Irureta chose along with Buenos Aires as a place of inspiration. “As a painter he knew how to define himself as an artist from La Boca, a landscape geography in which he was enrolled from the beginning and where he continued to have one of his two ateliers, the other in an attic behind the Tilcareño museum. There he began to portray corners of an urban mythology where faceless men gathered around the tables of Buenos Aires bars.

An integral part of artistic groups such as the Buenos Aires Group, the Group of Nine and the Ribera Group, Irureta was, in addition to being a painter, a cultural disseminator, founder of the Museum of Plastic Arts of Animaná in 1980, and later of the Museum of Fine Arts in Tilcara in 1988. In addition, he donated works of his authorship to institutions and charities, as well as to the Casa Argentina in Paris. “Painting is a life process,” he stated in an interview with Vicente Zito Lema. That was the motto that allowed him to remain active until his death, at an advanced age, in 2015.
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