Page 270 - YGARTUA : The Work Of A Genius

renderings of Curtis’s exceptional photographic collection of
PAUL YGARTUA: THE BASQUES HISTORICAL ORIGINS
AND INDIGENOUS ROOTS
“It is a lifelong study, recording The First People of the World,
and it is particularly unique to be part of such an ancient
ancestry.”
It is not surprising that Ygartua takes an interest in the
First People of the World as he himself does come from an
Indigenous Group of People, The Basques from Northern Spain,
The Basque Country. Ygartua, in the last 50 years has probably
created the most significant, important recordings of the First
People of the World of the 20th and 21st century.
A series of paintings of the Indigenous People of the World,
the West Coast Natives along with their extraordinary work
have been the most predominant and of equal importance,
the Africans, the Mexican Natives, the Incas and Mayans,
the Peruvian Natives, the Native American, the Australian
Aboriginals and South American Natives, the Basque People,
India and the Semitic Peoples of ancient Southwestern Asia.
“Over the years it really seems that a guiding hand is directing
me to create a tableau, a record of character portraying the
Nomadic People of the World” Paul inspires adulation from his
Collectors and admirers including Edward Curtis’s daughter
who visited us in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978, ecstatic about his
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the Native American Natives which Paul used as subject matter
over many years from 1970 until present day. Curitis’s daughter
was particularly elated that her Father’s work would also
continue on through Paul in a larger format and adorn the walls
of patrons all over the world–bringing awareness about and
appreciation, encouraging the education of informing the public
the importance and value of our natives and their folkloric
customs. Edward Sheriff Curtis, American photographer and
chronicler of Native American peoples whose work perpetuated
an influential image of Indians as a “vanishing race.”
The North American Indian was perhaps the most ambitious
publication ever undertaken by a single man, and it was widely
hailed as a landmark in American publishing history.
In 1911, the New York Herald said that it was the most gigantic
undertaking since the publication of the King James Edition
of the Bible. Taken as a whole, the work of Edward Curtis is a
singular achievement. Never before have we seen the Indians
of North America so close to the origins of their humanity, their
sense of themselves in the world, their innate dignity and self-
possession.
These photographs comprehend more than an aboriginal
culture, more than a prehistoric past, more, even, than a
venture into a world of incomparable beauty and nobility.
Curtis’s photographs comprehend indispensable images of
every human being at every time in every place. In the focus
upon the landscape of the continent and its indigenous people,
a Curtis photograph becomes universal: N. Scott Momaday, a
leading voices in modern Native American literature. “It seems
that there is a force, a guiding hand that is instrumental in his
search for subject matter (since 1970), that inspires, influences
and motivates Ygartua in this direction it is interminable.”
INDIGENOUS SERIES 1, 2020 ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 40X72 IN. | 101X182 CM.
SITTING BULL, 2020 ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 40X72 IN. | 101X182 CM.