In the blue light - selected paintings by Benjamín Palencia

 

 Retrato, 1925.

Muchacho, circa 1917-19.

Muchacho, 1925.

El grabador, 1919.

Seminarista.

Retrato de hombre, 1918.

Campesino castellano.

Unknown title, unknown date.

Jugador de pelota.

Retrato de Solana, 1918.

Autorretrato, 1920.

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Portrait of Palencia, circa 1920s.

Benjamín Palencia (7 July 1894, Barrax - 16 January 1980, Madrid), Spanish painter and draftsman, best known for his landscapes of the Castilian region. At the age of fifteen, he moved to Madrid with his family. There, he began copying the paintings of Velázquez and El Greco in the Prado Museum and befriended fellow artists, including Salvador Dali. Along with a group of his peers, he moved to Paris, where he was included in a number of important exhibitions. Two years later he returned to Madrid, where he and his friend the sculptor Alberto Sánchez Pérez co-founded the Vallecas School. During the following decades, he received a number of prestigious awards and was elected as a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museo de Bellas Artes in Valencia, and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, among others.

Photograph of Palencia at eighty years old by Alberto Schommer, 1974.

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There's no "blue light" in either of these still-lifes, so they don't align with the post's theme. But I like them - so here they are anyway!

Naturaleza muerta, 1925.

Naturaleza muerta del sifón, 1920.