AGUSTÍN IBARROLA, Abatimiento de los emigrantes, c.1960

A powerful expressionist linocut from the politically charged early career of one of Spain’s most socially engaged postwar artists.

Created during Ibarrola’s years of activism and affiliation with Equipo 57, this linocut captures the desolation of Spanish emigrants through an austere composition of compressed faces and dark tonal contrasts. The work belongs to his period of militant realism, where form and ideology merge in protest against the social conditions of the 1960s.

Carved with harsh, direct strokes and printed in stark black, the piece embodies the artist’s empathy toward the working class and displaced rural communities, standing as both document and denunciation.

Object: Linocut on paper

Artist: Agustín Ibarrola (Basauri, 1930–2024)

Title: Abatimiento de los Emigrantes (Despair of the Emigrants)

Date: c.1960

Medium: Linocut, signed in pen and numbered

Edition: 268/500 (actual edition under 50)

Dimensions: Plate: 64.5 × 50 cm / Framed: 90 × 70 cm

School / Movement: Basque Expressionism, Social Realism

Condition: Excellent

Provenance: Spain

Notable Detail: Produced during Ibarrola’s period of political repression and artistic activism; an early example of his socially committed printmaking, preceding his later environmental “Bosques” and “Cubos de la Memoria.”