Ignacio Iturria. Untitled, 1981
Technique: Oil. Measurements: 65 x 45 cm
Ignacio Iturria was born in Montevideo (Uruguay) in 1949. He began to relate to painting from his childhood and youth. In 1977 he married and traveled to Spain. He settled in Cadaqués, a city on the Mediterranean coast, near Barcelona, where he worked alongside the Catalan master Ramón Aguilar Moré. He temporarily returned to Uruguay in 1980, where he held several exhibitions. He returned to Barcelona in 1982, where he maintained a close relationship with Catalan painters such as Tharrats, Cuixart and Pitxot, and exhibited in several Spanish cities such as Girona, Cadaqués, Barcelona, Olot, Valencia and Madrid.
In 1986 he returned to Uruguay and held exhibitions in Punta del Este and later in Buenos Aires, and in the following two years in different Latin American cities.
In 1988 he was invited by the Fund for Artists Colonies of New York to participate in a colony of artists from different countries.
He has received numerous international awards, including the Grand Prize of the IV Painting Biennial of the city of Cuenca (1994). In 1995 he represented Uruguay at the 46th Venice Biennale where he obtained the Casa di Risparmio Prize. In 2000 he received the Grand Prize at the XII San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Engraving, Puerto Rico. In 2001, the Figari Prize in Uruguay and Recognition as “Personality of Uruguayan Culture”, by the Cultural Parliament of Mercosur, in 2005.
He has exhibited his paintings in Uruguay and in numerous spaces and countries, including the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Colombia, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the José Luis Cuevas Museum and the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, in the Marlborough Gallery, New York, in Boca Raton, Florida, USA, in Toronto, Canada, at the Cervantes Institute, and at the Patrice Trigano Gallery, in Paris, at the Levant Gallery, in Shanghai, China, at the Museum of Youngeun Contemporary Art, Korea, in Arequipa, Peru, at Oriol Galería D’Art, Barcelona.
In 2004, he was invited to Guatemala to participate as a jury in the XIV Paiz Art Biennial in that country. Then he stayed for a while working in the middle of the jungle of El Salvador.
In April 2006 he settled again in Cadaqués, Spain. There, he spent three years painting in a huge workshop, where he received constant visits from painters, students and friends who stayed temporarily to paint with him.
In 2012, the Ignacio Iturria Foundation was established, whose main objective is to promote the vocational development of artists and the creation of an Artists Colony, which already has its campus in Rosario, department of Colonia.
In 2015, an anthological exhibition of his works was held at the National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay.
In 2017 he was invited by the Neuberger Museum in New York to exhibit and do a three-month residency at the Museum’s University of Art.
In 2019 he held an individual exhibition at the Atchugarry Foundation in Manantiales, Uruguay He participates annually in art fairs in Uruguay, Miami, New York, London, Madrid, China, Germany, Peru, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, etc.
Source: Iturria Foundation, Uruguay, 2022. At: https://www.iturria.com.uy/