Pablo Palazuelo

PABLO PALAZUELO (Madrid, 1916 - Galapagar, Madrid, 2007).
"De Somnis XXIX", 2000.
Gouache on paper.
Signed by the artist on the front.
Joan Prats Gallery stamp on the back.
Attached certificate of the Palazuelo Foundation.
Measurements: 61 x 46 cm; 97 x 82 cm (frame).

The series "De Somnis", as the title refers, evokes the process of dreams. They are, however, "dreams of vigil", as Palazuelo himself said in an interview. The gouache we are dealing with here translates a state of mind, a rough cartography formed by sharp planes, laminated sections, rounded volumes. The black on white emphasizes the idea of the irruption of the ominous in the light of day. Palazuelo creates a sort of mental cartography with these abstract forms, diagrams of invisible energies. The geometry is neither rigid nor static, but seems to obey an occult order, as in his earlier investigations into the mathematics of nature. Influenced by kabbalah, alchemy and mathematics, the artist understood geometry as a language that could reveal a deeper and more essential reality. In this sense, the painting seems to suggest a spiritual structure, a map of the invisible that refers to a dynamic universe that is projected from the psyche. "De Somnis" is an example of how Palazuelo continues to explore, until the end of his life, the relationship between art, science and spirituality, using geometry as a means to reveal hidden structures of reality.

Painter, engraver and sculptor, Pablo Palazuelo was one of the key figures of Spanish art in the second half of the 20th century. He studied architecture in Madrid and Oxford, but in 1939 he decided to devote himself fully to painting. During these years he competed in various national competitions, such as the National Exhibition in Madrid in 1945. Two years later he began to make his first abstract drawings, and debuted in a collective of young artists at the Buchholz gallery in Madrid. In 1948 he moved to study in France, with a scholarship from the French Institute. There he exhibited that same year at the Denise Rene gallery in Paris, which was the definitive push for the dissemination of his work. Throughout his career, Palazuelo has won awards such as the Kandinsky and Carnegie, the Medal of Fine Arts, the National Plastic Arts and the Velázquez Prize, among others. In 1995 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him, and between 2006 and 2007 the MACBA in Barcelona and the Guggenheim in Bilbao did the same. His style is characterized by a purely linear abstraction, which starts with the post-impressionist experiences of the turn of the century and reaches its ultimate consequences in the sixties with minimalism. Palazuelo conceives art as "a way out of human problems", and populates his works with references to the history of painting. His language is intimately linked to a rational process based on the discovery, not invention, of new forms. Palazuelo is currently represented at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Maeght Foundation in France, the Museums of Modern Art of the Village of Paris and Rio de Janeiro, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and the Kunsthaus in Zurich, among many others.