Shade - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

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Shade

Palazuelo, Pablo

Madrid, 08/10/1915-Galapagar, Madrid, 02/10/2007

Oil on canvas

230 x 144.8 cm

Palazuelo (bottom left hand corner); P. PALAZUELO (on the reverse)

1972

20th century. Third quarter

82/316

Acquired in 1973

Born in Madrid, the painter and sculptor Pablo Palazuelo developed one of the most significant oeuvres in Spanish art from the 1950s to 1970s, and he exerted a heavy influence on this scene, as is evident in the works of Chillida, Oteiza, Basterretxea, Equipo 57 and Balerdi. Associated with a fundamentally geometric form of expression, though always vibrant, dynamic and with organic derivations, his pioneering works in post-war Spanish abstraction, starting from an initial correspondence with those of Paul Klee and Jacques Villon, managed to suggest a world of splendid colour and heavy symbolic meaning, intense and essential expressiveness and extraordinary refinement.

Shade dates from Palazuelo's peak. The simplification that his works underwent through a kind of painting with nuanced flat colours and large para-geometric shapes boasting a sophisticated solemnity was first accompanied by a colour range restricted to deep black, ochre and white, although it later blossomed into a sumptuous variety of blues, oranges, reds, yellows, greens and purples. The titles are somewhere between poetry and esoteric nomenclature, and configurations and colours extracted from the world of labyrinths, mandalas and gnostic symbolism hint at the author's spiritual interests. This permeates his geometry with a visual energy that transcends mere formalism and imbues it with expressive resources brimming with a secret lyricism. Shade is a masterpiece whose morphology is atypical within Palazuelo's oeuvre, with its triple phallic image bisecting the space diagonally, although its linear design (Gothic lines of force; in fact, Gothic is the title of an engraving by the artist which depicts this same image but inverted), the opulence of the colour and the sensitive variation of the boundaries correspond to a more streamlined Palazuelo, the master of an extremely difficult simplicity and a penetrating artistic imagination. [Javier Viar]

Selected bibliography

  • Palazuelo [Cat. exp.]. Madrid, Galería Iolas Velasco, 1973.
  • Bengoechea, Javier de. Catálogo de arte moderno y contemporáneo del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Bilbao, Banco de Vizcaya, 1980. p. 92. (Con el título Umbra).
  • De Picasso a Bacon : arte contemporáneo en las colecciones del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao [Cat. exp.]. Segovia, Museo de Arte Contemporánea Esteban Vicente, 1999. pp. 118-119.
  • Palazuelo : proceso de trabajo [Cat. exp.]. Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2006. pp. 169, 325. (Con el título Umbra)
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 184-185.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 184-185.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 184-185.
  • Palazuelo : proceso de trabajo [Cat. exp.]. Barcelona ; Bilbao, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona ; Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, 2006. pp. 169, 325. (Con el título Umbra)
  • Viar Olloqui, Javier. "Palazuelo eta euskal artea : Irudia margolanean oinarritutako hausnarketak = Palazuelo y el arte vasco : reflexiones a partir de Imagen = Palazuelo and the basque art : Thoughts on Image", B'07 : Buletina = Boletín = Bulletin, n° 3. 2008. pp. 268-269.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2011. pp. 184-185, n° cat. 131b.
  • Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa : gida. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2012. pp. 184-185, n° cat. 131b.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 184-185.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 184-185.
  • Torre, Alfonso de la. Pablo Palazuelo : catálogo razonado = catalogue raisonné. Madrid, Fundación Azcona, 2015. p. 194, n° cat. 155, P-1972-6.
  • Maestros : Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao . Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2016. pp. 108-109, il.
  • Maisuak : Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2016. pp. 108-109, il.
  • Masters : Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2016. pp. 108-109, il.
  • Maîtres : Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bilbao. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2016. pp. 108-109, il.
  • 110 Años 110 Obras [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 276-277, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Ans 110 Oeuvres [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 276-277, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Urte 110 Artelan [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 276-277, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Years 110 Works [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 276-277, sin n° cat.
  • Viar, Javier. Hijos de la angustia. Bilbao, Muelle de Uribitarte, 2019. p. 27.