Lola read up on Urpiano and went to see a famous painter, Javier
Mezquiriz. The biographical details Lola found about Urpiano were as
follows: Born in El Roncal, a village in the province of Navarre at
the end of the 19th century. Studied in Santander and then moved to
France. In 1920, he arrrived in Paris where he got to know Andre
Breton, Mac Ernst, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Painted in cubist
style with an added surrealist influence. From the 1930s, he lived in
Figeures and spent a lot of time with Dali. After the Civil War, he
went to Argentina. Nothing much was heard about him after that. It was
thought he died in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s. It seems he had
financial problems and sold off all his paintings very cheaply. In
1980, three of his paintings appeared in Spain. The critics enthused
about them, and his works rapidly increased in value. Urpiano became
fashionable, and from that time other of his paintings began to
appear. In the previous year, more than 30 of his paintings had been
sold at very high prices. Lola and her colleagues were puzzled,
because they had never heard of this painter, while they and everyone
else had heard of Dali. A famous painter, Javier Mezquiriz, told Lola
he thought Urpiano's paintings varied greatly in quality. He told Lola
that some people thought Urpiano had actually been the same person as
Dali, but this could not be the case because Dali was much better at
drawing than Urpiano. Lola went to look at the paintings Cayetano had
bought, and found that some of them had “Figueres” stamped on the back
of the canvas. Figueres is where Urpiano had supposedly lived for a
time. |
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