Benjamin Palencia

BENJAMÍN 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 cm (frame).
This set of drawings is linked to the illustrations that Palencia made in 1963 for a special edition of Platero y yo, a work by the writer Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Benjamín Palencia, co-founder of the Vallecas School together with Alberto Sánchez, was an outstanding heir to the Castilian landscape tradition of the Generation of '98. He was self-taught at the Prado Museum, rejecting academic education. After participating in the Exhibition of Iberian Artists (1925), he traveled to Paris, where he came into contact with the avant-garde and adopted techniques such as collage, which prompted a surrealist turn in his work. Back in Madrid he founded the Vallecas School and developed a painting centered on the Castilian rural world, highlighting its austerity and expressive force. Recognized in his maturity, he obtained important prizes in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts in the 40's, although he renounced to one of them in favor of José Gutiérrez Solana.