Felipe Bello Piñeiro

FELIPE BELLO PIÑEIRO (Seixo, Galicia, 1886 - 1952).
"Wooded landscape".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 78 x 93 cm; 95 x 109,5 cm (frame).

The painting of Felipe Bello Piñeiro is characterized by a delicate naturalism and a special sensibility towards the landscape, particularly the Galician, of which he was one of its most outstanding interpreters. His work shows a clear influence of impressionism and luminism, visible in his interest in capturing the atmospheric variations, the changing light and the chromatic richness of nature, especially in marinas, estuaries, ports and rural scenes. He used a loose but controlled brushstroke and a harmonious palette, with a predominance of soft and nuanced tones, achieving balanced compositions that transmit serenity and a deep bond with the environment.

Trained at the School of Arts and Crafts of Ferrol with the painters Eduardo de la Vega and Vicente Díaz, Felipe Bello moved to Madrid to continue his training at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando. It was in the capital where Bello began to rub shoulders with illustrious and important Galician personalities of great plastic and intellectual interest, such as the Galician nationalist Rodríguez Castelao, the sculptor Asorey González, the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán and the architect Antonio Palacio. It was in the capital where he held his first exhibition of Galician painting, to show his work individually for the first time in 1913. In 1917 he moved definitively to his native Seixo, specializing in the theme of landscape, capturing the Galician areas of South America, determined by the eminently modernist atmosphere. Such was his admiration for the landscape that the Galician artist became president of the Society of Friends of the Landscape of Galicia. Bello Piñero works his painting in an ambitious and interesting way, on the one hand, his landscapes reflect highly idealized stylizations, while his psychological portraits show us worried characters, with an enormous expressive charge. The pictorial trajectory of Bello Piñeiro even leaves room for experimentation, bringing elements ranging from geometric exercise to the multiplication of the same image, as if we were in front of a kaleidoscope.