On May 19, the deadline for registering works to participate in the ‘City of Calahorra National Painting Award’ concluded. This annual call is long-lived because it reaches its twenty-eighth edition; and also a traveler because during all these years, the works selected and … The award-winning works have been seen in traveling exhibitions in San Sebastián, Irún, Santander, Úbeda, Jaén and Seville. In addition, Calahorra, Haro and Logroño are regular venues for the contest in La Rioja.
Once the first phase has expired, it is up to the jury to make a selection of works to later deliberate on the awards. With the awards ceremony, a traveling exhibition will be inaugurated that can be seen during the summer at the Casa de los Curas de Calahorra. The Torreón de Haro Museum will host it in autumn and, as winter enters, it will travel to the Amaya Cultural Center in Irún to close the current edition in February 2025.
The last two calls were won by Andalusian painters. José Manuel Sánchez from Granada, in 2022, was the first painter to do so with a watercolor and Francisco Escalera from Córdoba, in 2023, the first to win first prize for the second time. It gives the impression that inspiration lives in the South, as I titled in a recent article published in this space.
However, and beyond mere statistical coincidences, the nature of this contest reflects, or knows how to reflect, the hedonism of painting, what we could define as the search for aesthetic delight in the craft of painting.
In the last edition, mature and evolved pictorial languages were scarce, and although there were no technically or conceptually risky proposals, striking images could be seen in the way the painting was constructed.
Especially interesting were the landscape by Isidoro Moreno and the composition by Ángel Algueró. The latter offered a careful allegory of painting, of the craft of painting seen through its materials. And even though it was small in size, Begoña Summers’ painting was no less attractive, a chromatic delight.
«Fortunately, there are events that continue to cultivate the spirit of the people of Rioja and those who visit us»
To the qualities of the winning work, which I already spoke and wrote about at the time, are added works that tend towards that same photographic drift, others that come from the field of quick painting, and works indebted to illustrative language that work very well. like painting. We’ll see what this edition brings.
The twenty-eight editions of the Calagurritano contest have made it an artistic reference in the national scope of painting competitions. And despite its limited media coverage in La Rioja, it is one of the longest-running artistic events on the dynamic Rioja cultural agenda.
Headed by the thirty-nine editions of the Young Art Exhibition in La Rioja, which is the oldest in our community, it is followed by the thirty-four of the almighty Actual Festival and the thirty of the ‘Café Bretón&Bodegas Olarra’ scholarship award for literature.
There are numerous Riojan cultural events. The National Garnacha de Rioja Theater Competition in Haro has twenty-six editions; The prestigious Octubre Corto festival in Arnedo has reached twenty-five, the same as the famous Early Music Week in Logroño. Also of Early Music was the Sajazarra Festival, which until 2012 scheduled twenty-three editions, and which fortunately was resumed two years ago. The one that did conclude, also with twenty-three editions, but definitely in 2012, was the Sajazarra Contemporary Art Exhibition. ‘Art on Earth’ followed the same path last year in Santa Lucía de Ocón, with twenty editions.
Fortunately, there are events that, either annually or biennially, continue to cultivate the spirit of the people of Rioja and those who visit us. An example of the first is the ‘Arnedillo Classical Music Festival’, which has been in its fifteenth edition; and an example of the second is the ‘Parliamentary Painting Prize’, with thirteen editions.
Recently, initiatives with great media projection have just burst in overwhelmingly in our region such as ‘La Rioja Festival Pablo Sainz-Villegas’, which celebrates its third musical May, or ‘Concentric’, the International Festival of Architecture and Design of Logroño that now has ten editions.
Now that we are looking at the cultural heritage of La Rioja, let us not lose sight of each of these activities of a diverse artistic nature, because through them we build the current cultural and artistic heritage, of which fortunately we are privileged witnesses.
