Juan Luis Goenaga has been one of the most representative contemporary artists of Basque expressionism. He died this Tuesday in Madrid at the age of 74 due to a serious illness he suffered. The Donostian artist has left behind an extensive and rich work of five decades of artistic development.

He started drawing from a young age, but he didn't get a formal education. He was self-taught. At the end of the stages of the ikastola and the baccalaureate, that is, around 18 years old, the painting was taken seriously. He lacked the technique, had to go outside to learn the technique. But Euskal Herria gave him everything else: the landscape. He drew from the landscapes. He told Zeruko Argia in an interview in 1972, responding to Errialde's questions. He had just won the Grand Prix of the Basque Painters with the work Zelatun.

At the time of the interview, Goenaga, 22, had been living in a hamlet in the Navarra locality of Alkiza for three years. He had previously visited Paris, Rome and London, and according to him he had often gone through the museums of these capitals. His eyes looked wide open, studying relentlessly. The Alkiza environment also looked like that. According to his own words, after spending days walking, he began painting at night, around the nature around him and the mythological and symbolic world that encandilated him. But Goenaga liked to paint gray, or at least dark; to give him another meaning, the green of the meadows around him was brown.

But he hasn't lived alone with the landscape around the ranges. He also always carries the photograph with him, and he has done some works that can be considered land art.