PABLO PALAZUELO
Madrid, (Spain) 1916 – Galapagar (Spain), 2007 

He studied architecture at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Institute of British Architects in Oxford (1933-36). After the Civil War he devoted himself exclusively to painting, producing his first works in 1939 and presenting paintings influenced by Cubism in the exhibition La joven escuela madrileña (Buchholz, 1945). He was taught by Daniel Vázquez Díaz in 1947, and that year he did his first abstract drawings. In 1948 he took part in the publication Homenaje a Paul Klee, a tribute to an artist who was fundamental in Palazuelo’s development. That year the French Institute gave him a grant for a stay in Paris, where he met Chillida and where he lived until 1963. The group exhibition Les mains éblouies brought him into contact with the Galerie Maeght in 1949. At that point he was interested in systems of philosophy and science connected with the exploration of matter. His work, influenced by Mondrian, Kandinsky and Klee, turned to abstraction rooted in Constructivism, with great importance given to colour. In 1952 he received the Kandinsky Prize, which marked the beginning of his international impact, and in 1954 he began to make sculptures. In his first solo exhibition, at Maeght (1955), he presented the series Solitudes (1955-56), in which his work acquired a new lyricism contained within geometrical strictness. After being selected by the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1955), Palazuelo frequently exhibited at Maeght (1958, 1963, 1970, 1978). In the early sixties he made the series Onde (Wave), Omphale (Omphalos) and Terre (Earth), characterised by the use of polygons with rounded corners and a predominance of black, red and yellow. In 1963 he returned to Spain. The series that he made in the late sixties, such as Cadmio (Cadmium) or Orto (Sunrise), embarked on a study of concentric form, while Smara introduced vertical compositions with long, straight, rhythmically broken lines. In 1973 his first solo exhibition in Spain was presented at Iolas-Velasco, with work from 1962 to 1973. In 1977, at Theo (Madrid), he presented a group of sculptures in aluminium, steel and copper. In 1978, at Maeght (Paris), he exhibited the series El número y las aguas (The Number and the Waters), the first of various series in which he worked with signs. During the eighties he continued his explorations in series such as Lauda and Silvarum and produced a considerable number of sculptures, which he presented at Theo (1981, 1985, 1987). During the nineties he embarked on series such as Nigredo and Marin, which he presented at Soledad Lorenzo (1991, 1994, 1999). A retrospective of his work was seen at the IVAM and the MNCARS in 1995.