Benjamin Palencia

BENJAMIN PALENCIA (Barrax, Albacete, 1894 - Madrid, 1980).
Untitled, 1965.
Card with handwritten text. Printed drawings, one of them hand colored.
Signed and dated.
Framed with visibility on both sides.
Measurements: 17.5 x 27 cm; 26 x 35 x 3 cm (frame).

Founder of the School of Vallecas together with Alberto Sánchez, sculptor, Benjamín Palencia was one of the most important heirs of the poetics of the Castilian landscape typical of the Generation of 98. With only fifteen years Palencia leaves his native town and settles in Madrid to develop his formation through his frequent visits to the Prado Museum, since he always rejected the official teachings of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. In 1925 he participates in the Exhibition of Iberian Artists held at the Retiro Palace in Madrid, and in 1926 he travels for the first time to Paris. There he met Picasso, Gargallo and Miró and came into contact with the collage technique, which he would later apply to his work, incorporating new materials such as sand or ashes. It will be from this Parisian stay when Palencia's work acquires a surrealist tone, evidenced in an increasingly greater expressive freedom that will reach its fullness in his period of maturity. On his return to Madrid he founded the Vallecas School (1927), and made his individual debut at the Museum of Modern Art (1928). His work will gather images of the Castilian countryside and its peasants and animals; his painting becomes a testimony of the rough, the coarse and the rural, of the subtle expressiveness of the Castilian sobriety. Already fully consolidated, in 1943 he obtained the first medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and in 1944 he was selected to participate in the Salón de los Once de Eugenio D'Ors in Madrid. The following year he was awarded the medal of honor at the National Exhibition, although he renounced it to facilitate its concession to José Gutiérrez Solana.