Juan Manuel Díaz Caneja

JUAN MANUEL DIAZ CANEJA (Palencia, 1905 - Madrid, 1988).
"Road Landscape".
Oil on canvas.
This work is auctioned with the purpose of raising funds to support the victims of the DANA in Valencia.
Work donated by Doña Carmen de la Cruz.
Measurements: 56 x 38,5 cm; 63 x 81 cm (frame).
Juan Manuel Díaz Caneja was a cubist painter, known and appreciated, above all, for his settings in the Castilian landscape. In 1923 he began his university studies in architecture in Madrid, and attended classes in the studio of Daniel Vázquez Díaz to prepare for the subject of drawing. He soon discovered his passion, and left his studies to devote himself to painting. He actively participated in the avant-garde cultural life, especially while living in the Residencia de Estudiantes in the capital. In 1927 he met the members of the Vallecas School Benjamín Palencia and Alberto Sánchez Pérez.
He saw and studied Cubism first hand when he spent the winter of 1929 in Paris. In 1930 he settled in Zaragoza, where he shared a studio with Manuel Corrales and González Bernal. A year later, in Madrid, he published with Herrera Perete an anarchist, Dadaist and surrealist magazine called "En España ya todo está preparado para que se enamoren los sacerdotes", and began his long list of exhibitions with his first solo exhibition three years later. After meeting his future partner Isabel Fernández Almansa, he joined the Communist Party of Spain, an affiliation he would maintain throughout his life, and joined the National Confederation of Labor.
He served on the Republican side during the Civil War, at the end of which he lived and worked in Madrid. In order to avoid censorship, his main theme was landscape, for which he would become so well known. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1948 for his links with the Republicans, spending three years in prisons (Carabanchel and Ocaña), but never stopped painting.
His work was, however, recognized with several awards (National Painting Prize in 1958; First Medal in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1962; National Prize of Plastic Arts of Spain in 1980; Castilla y León Prize of Arts in 1984) and with the creation in Palencia, in 1995, of a foundation with his name, which has its headquarters in the Museum of Contemporary Art of this city.
His work has been exhibited in Madrid, Santander, Bilbao, Paris, Copenhagen, Zaragoza, Pamplona, León, Valladolid, Rome, etc., and is kept in important private collections all over the world and in important institutions (his aforementioned foundation, the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, etc.).