(b Villafranca de Oricia, nr Guipúzcoa, 19 Dec 1913; d Fruniz, Viscaya, 11 June 1937). Spanish photographer and painter. A self-taught photographer, he first studied painting at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in San Sebastian (1929–31) and at the Escuela de Aparejadores in Madrid (1932–5). He used photographic techniques, including photomontage, photocollage, cliché-verre and drawings on photographic paper. After his apprenticeship in his native town, he travelled to Madrid, where he came into contact with the artistic and literary world. His dynamic compositions and ability to organize apparent chaos into a harmonious and coherent space connect Lekuona’s work with Futurism. In Untitled (photocollage, 1934) a runner advancing towards the picture plane, with a dancing woman at his shoulder, is enmeshed in a thread connected to a skull, with a suggestion of a ‘dance of death’. Lekuona died on the Basque Front during the Spanish Civil War.