In his native town of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Santos Iñurrieta (born 1950) developed an intense painterly activity in the 70s and 80s, taking an unceasing part in the attempt to renovate the artistic language promoted by the so-called Basque School and more exactly by the Orain group, of which he is considered to be a disciple. In the same sense, he also took part in the development «of the complex role of art and artists in the social and cultural context», as Enrique Martínez Goikoetxea points out. «Captivated by pictorial experimentation, he combined abstraction and figuration, and later an expressive form, kitsch, multiple and irreverent, which has given shape to his current language».

In this sense, the recent works that Santos Iñurrieta presents in Ke usted lo pase bien are intensely figurative and narrative. The painter once stated in an interview that «as a painter I am completely naïf. (…) I use this rudimentary technique and that rough drawing style that I find very useful for telling stories». His paintings feature scenes and situations, external and internal landscapes between «figures that lie in a reflexive pose, take part in a day-to-day action, eat, work or observe a new painting…», «situations that seduce us and invite us to speculate».

A large part of this exhibition consists of large-format works, paintings that measure two metres by two metres and large tryptychs, in which he pays special attention to the composition of the scenes. In this regard, Professor Francisco Javier San Martín indicates that «not so much for their physical size, their large format, nor for the multiplicity of the figures and situations, but due to their centrifugal compositions, Iñurrieta’s paintings seem to be even bigger than they are».

San Martín adds that «his large tryptychs do not contain images that we can perceive in an instant but rather a surface that is gradually disclosed through a successive reading of objects, figures and scenes cleverly arranged on the broad support of the surface». The Professor concludes that «there is no doubt that Santos Iñurrieta seeks to impress the spectator with the size and format of his paintings, but he invites him at the same time to pay attention to the details, press his nose against the canvas as if it were a small painting».

The exhibition also features a small collection of smaller-size paintings and a series of gouaches, which, as is the case of the other paintins, are of recent creation.

Ke usted lo pase bien, by Santos Iñurrieta, is a production of Artium with the sponsorship of El Correo, EDP Energia, Euskaltel and Fundación Vital.

«Instead of sleeping, Iñurrieta stays at the party, with his guests, converted into available signs. These signs are spread out like colours on a palette for mixing and to obtain the required blend. It might appear that there is a concealed system, a procedure designed to obtain the maximum pictorical efficiency, but there is none: there is simply no system; wandering, nomadic, ambling, with no core and no framework. But, in order to offset this fact, the story that grows and spreads out is enthralling. I invite readers to dedicate at least two or three minutes to an examination of the narrative sections of his large paintings. Two or three minutes may be enough time to become fascinated, to feel the initial emotion, but there is still more. It is precisely the complexity and fragmentary nature of his compositional architecture and the textual tangle of the stories woven in them that make these paintings a kind of inexhaustible tank of clean energy. The spectator’s body turns into a penetrating and insatiable eye and, before him, the painting, which seems to become gradually wider, swell, grow or move, to satisfy that eye that never gets enough, that “devouring” vision, to use the expression that Merleau-Ponty applies to the painter, and which is also applicable the spectator (…) - a spectator who doesn’t want to stop the party and go away to have a rest, a spectator who, if he attends to his wishes, will need much more than two or three minutes in front of the painting».
Francisco Javier San Martín, in the exhibition catalogue Ke usted lo pase bien