Benjamin Palencia

BENJAMÍN PALENCIA (Barrax, Albacete, 1894 - Madrid, 1980).
Untitled, 1972.
Pen on paper.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the Benjamín Palencia Archive.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 44 x 32 cm.
When he was barely fifteen years old, Benjamín Palencia left his native town to settle in Madrid and train as an artist independently, frequenting the Prado Museum and deliberately distancing himself from traditional academic teaching. He soon became one of the most restless figures of the Spanish avant-garde. His trip to Paris in 1926 was a turning point: there he met Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Gargallo, coming into contact with surrealism, collage and new forms of pictorial experimentation. Upon his return, he founded the Vallecas School with Alberto Sánchez, a movement that transformed the Castilian landscape into a poetic and spiritual symbol of Spanish modernity. After the crisis caused by the Civil War, his work progressively abandoned cubist influences to focus on a freer and more chromatic language, dedicated to the fields, peasants and horizons of Castile, which became authentic emblems of identity and memory.