Pamplona (EFE).- The “Geometric Method” by Pablo Pazuelo (Madrid, 1916 – Galapagar, 2007) arrives at the University of Navarra Museum with an exhibition that brings together more than 130 paintings, sculptures, drawings and sketches, as well as books and other documents.
Works belonging to the University of Navarra Museum Collection and the Palazuelo Foundation, which collaborates in the proposal, make up this exhibition that includes a sculptural piece that belongs to the Freijo gallery in Madrid, reports the museum, which highlights that 60% of the pieces had not been displayed to date.
Through them the visitor can get closer to the figure of the artist, one of the great references of Geometric Abstraction in Spain, and his creative process, as has been revealed in the presentation that has included José Rodríguez-Spiteri, president the Palazuelo Foundation; Gonzalo Sotelo-Calvillo, curator and curator of the Palazuelo Foundation; and Valentín Vallhonrat, artistic director of the University of Navarra Museum together with Rafael Levenfeld.
“The visitor will find an arrangement of the artist’s work that integrates the pieces from the University of Navarra Museum Collection, from the legacy of María Josefa Huarte, in a coherent narrative, ordered not chronologically, but through the series of the different works, depending on how the geometric process that it develops is like”, explained the curator.
In this regard, he has indicated that he seeks, “from a didactic point of view, to explain or bring closer to the visitor not only the finished work, which is what is normally found in an exhibition, but also to add what the previous steps are, that is, the sketches he made on onion paper, sketches and the color tests that will accompany the finished drawing or oil painting or the final sculpture”.
A way to show your way of working
Throughout his career, they have indicated, the artist was very careful to show his way of working and this exhibition sheds light on this process and exhibits pieces that illustrate it.
“At the beginning, when Palazuelo drew, there was no geometric relationship between his strokes. What he did throughout his life was frantically search for a geometry that would serve as a structure, such as a mesh or a grid on which to place the designs to set the rules of the game, as if it were a chess board”, the curator pointed out. .
Regarding the use of color, he pointed out that “Palazuelo looked at the symbolic part of colors based on alchemy. The Opus Magnum book proposes four stages of knowledge, black, white, greenish yellow and, finally, ruby red. These colors are seen in almost all the works”.
The development of Palazuelo’s artistic career and his life experiences go hand in hand and two key trips cannot be ignored: a formative one, which he took in Oxford to study Architecture, and his time in Paris.
“From the period in Oxford come, for example, the accuracy, the rigor in the drawing and the use of papers that are transparent. There are many works that are like the mirror: he drew with a greasy pencil on one side, turned it around, passed a punch and remained impregnated in the other drawing. Thus, the original and the sketch are the same but seen in a mirror”, he has detailed.
In Paris he meets Chillida, Calder, Miró, Giacometti or Braque and it is there “where he begins to try to find the theoretical foundations, visiting old bookstores”.
