20th-21st Century Spanish

Palazuelo’s practice, based on an ongoing quest for new forms and the creation of endless variations, is grounded in intellectual, mathematical, spiritual and philosophic reasoning. He began studying Architecture in 1932 in Madrid, later continuing his education at the Oxford School of Arts and Crafts. After the end of the Spanish Civil War—in which he took part as an air force pilot—he decided to devote himself to painting, from which he shifted in the 1950s to sculpture, which then became his main concern.

His work was exhibited publicly for the first time in 1945, at the National Fine Arts Exposition held at the exhibition hall in El Retiro park in Madrid. In 1948 he won a scholarship from the French Government to study in Paris, where he met Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002). In that period his career took off internationally, and he did not exhibit again in Spain until 1964, with a show at Galería Juana Mordó. In 1969 Palazuelo settled definitively in Galapagar (Madrid).

Meanwhile, the artist was awarded the Kandinsky Prize, in 1952; in 1955 he had his first solo show at Galerie Maeght in Paris, where he would later exhibit on several occasions; and in 1969 he won the First Printmaking Award at the Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Art.

His work has been surveyed in major retrospectives, such as the ones held at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and IVAM in Valencia in 1995, and another one organised at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2005. As far as distinctions are concerned, apart from the above-mentioned ones, he also won the 1981 Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and in 2004, the Velázquez Visual Arts Prize.