Artist

Víctor Patricio Landaluze

(Bilbao, 1830-Guanabacoa, Cuba 1889)

Víctor Patricio Landaluze was born in Bilbao in 1830. His artistic abilities soon became evident and he was first taught by José Madrazo in Madrid. After this, Landaluze went to Paris to learn the technique of lithography. At the age of twenty he moved to Cuba, first settling in the city of Cárdenas and then in La Habana, one of the most important cultural centres in Central America at that period and a city characterized by the refined social customs of the middle and elite social classes. Landaluze embarked on a lengthy career as an illustrator and caricaturist for the press. He worked for a wide variety of periodicals of the day and his works increasingly focused on picturesque scenes of the everyday life of the humbler social classes. He also produced illustrations for works such as Los cubanos pintados por sí mismos [Cubans depicted by themselves] and was responsible for the section entitled Latest Fashions in El Almendares in which he reflected the diversity and elegance of Cuban society of this period. Landaluze died of tuberculosis in 1889, having received numerous decorations (both artistic and military) from the Spanish government.