Ramiro Arrue

Ramiro Arrue y Valle, generally known as Ramiro Arrue (1892 - 1971) was a Basque painter, illustrator, and ceramist, of Spanish nationality, who devoted his work to the Basque Country.

Ramiro Arrue was born into an artistic family: his three older brothers, Alberto, Ricardo, and José, were also artists and frequently held joint exhibitions with him. He also had two sisters. Their father, Lucas Arrue, was an art collector who sold his collections (including a Goya) to pay for the artistic training of his sons. At the age of nineteen, Ramiro travelled to Paris to take courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Living in Montparnasse, he became an associate of his countrymen Ignacio Zuloaga and Francisco Durrio de Madrón, as well as the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who became a close friend. He was also associated with Picasso, Modigliani, and Jean Cocteau. In 1911, Arrue exhibited at the Salon des Artistes français.

In 1922, along with his friends Philip Veyrin and Commandant William Boissel, he founded the Musée Basque at Bayonne.

In 1943, Ramiro Arrue, who had not become a naturalized French citizen, was arrested with other Spanish Basques and imprisoned in the fortress of St. Jean Pied de Port. He resumed painting after the war.
The end of Arrue's life was marred by loneliness and financial hardship. He died in April 1971 of lung cancer.

Ramiro Arrue remains one of the most representative painters of the Basque Country. His style is figurative, featuring simple lines with an almost monumental quality and muted colour harmonies. The academic Hélène Saule-Sorbé wrote: "The colours of Ramiro Arrue's brush are a trilogy: green, white, red. The permanence of heraldry, a sign of belonging, the palette of a country of green hills, of bright white houses whose roofs and woodwork is red".