The exhibition Ría y Mar. Visiones de JR Luzuriaga by the artist Juan Ramón Luzuriaga (Deusto, February 16, 1938) brings together fifteen evocative paintings of the maritime environment of Bizkaia. On the one hand, industrial images of the estuary, with its cranes, factories and port vessels and, on the other hand, representative sandy beaches of Bizkaia.

Trained at the San Jorge Academy in Barcelona and at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, Luzuriaga was initiated in the technique of drawing with the sculptor Martínez Arteaga and initially his painting is influenced by Evaristo Valle (1873-1951), Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1882-1969) and Turner, whom he studied in London when he was beginning his career.

Luzuriaga is an outstanding Basque landscape painter, mainly of seascapes, in which the scenes of the estuary occupy a very prominent place, an inexhaustible source of his iconography.

It is important to point out the fundamental role played by the estuary in the origins of artistic modernity in the Basque Country, closely linked to industrial development. From the beginning of the 20th century, the Bilbao estuary was considered a symbol of prosperity and became a very attractive enclave for the artistic creation of the time.