Benjamin Palencia

BENJAMÍN PALENCIA, (Barrax, Albacete, 1894 - Madrid, 1980).
"Landscape", 1945.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Provenance: Gallery Jorge Juan of Madrid.
Measurements: 100 x 100 cm, 122 x 122 cm (frame).

Benjamín Palencia, one of the key figures of modern landscape painting in Spain, offers us in Paisaje a vibrant and poetic vision of his environment. With an expressive brushstroke and a palette rich in hallmarks of green, ochre and earth, the artist achieves a composition of great spatial depth, structured in harmoniously overlapping planes.
This work, executed in 1945, belongs to his period of maturity, when his painting abandoned the surrealist and cubist influence to consolidate a personal language of strong chromatic impact and Fauvist character. Palencia not only represents the landscape, but also interprets it from an intuitive sensibility, transforming it into a sensorial and emotional experience. The rhythmic structure of the cypress trees and the light filtering through hills and valleys evoke a nature in constant movement, reflecting his vision of art as a means of poetic exploration.

Founder of the Vallecas School, Benjamin Palencia was an essential figure in the modernization of landscape painting in Spain. Self-taught and outside of academic teaching, he found inspiration in the Prado Museum and in his trips to Paris (1926), where he made contact with Picasso, Miró and Gargallo. In the 1920s, his work acquired surrealist and cubist influences, but after the Civil War he evolved towards a more expressive and colorful language, close to Fauvism.
His work as a landscape painter redefined the Castilian tradition with a modern vision, integrating emotion and matter in each brushstroke. He received important distinctions, such as the First Medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts (1943) and the Medal of Honor in 1945, although he renounced the latter in favor of José Gutiérrez Solana. His work can be found in museums such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca, consolidating him as one of the great renovators of 20th century Spanish art.