Orlando Pelayo

ORLANDO PELAYO ENTRIALGO (Gijón, 1920 - Oviedo, 1990).
"Black paintings". 1962
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 72 x 59 cm; 89,5 x 76,5 cm (frame).
Painter and engraver of universal fame, belonging to the new Parisian school, Orlando Pelayo spent his first years between Badajoz and Albacete. Exiled in Algeria after the Civil War, at the age of twenty-four he held his first individual exhibition, and in 1946 he participated, with notable recognition, in a collective exhibition organized in the Museum of Oran, which also included artists such as Picasso, Matisse and other great contemporary painters. His fame reached Paris, where he took up residence in 1947 and became part of the local artistic life. With a painting entitled "L'enfant mort" he revalidated in Paris the fame that had preceded him, and from then on his work would be admired in the main capitals of the world. He was awarded a prize at the Menton Biennial in 1953, and in 1955 he was awarded the Otto Friesz Grand Prix. In later years he would be awarded in Paris, and his paintings would appear in important collections not only in France and Spain, but also in Mexico, Algeria, Sweden, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, Switzerland and Luxembourg. His return to Spain was late, when political circumstances allowed it. In 1984 he was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and a few months before his death he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Principality of Asturias, while the Oviedo City Council's commission for culture had approved his nomination for the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. In the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias there is a permanent exhibition of a good sample of his work, in total more than fifty paintings donated by the artist himself.