The ICO Museum is hosting an exhibition from 15 February to 7 May which portrays for the first time ever the career of Pablo Palazuelo, considered to be the greatest representative of 20th century geometric abstraction, through a selection of works and projects that illustrate the relationship between architecture and his artistic production.

This exhibition is curated by Teresa Raventós-Viñas and Gonzalo Sotelo-Calvillo, author of the doctoral thesis, Analysis of Pablo Palazuelo's geometry from the architect's vision which, defended at Madrid Polytechnic-University in 2015, serves as the basis for the exhibition. The exhibition is divided into nine areas, ranging from the artist's formative stage and early influences, to his furniture designs for the domestic environment or the great works conceived for the urban scale. It passes through others in which the emphasis falls on references to labyrinths, transits, enclosures, limits and stained glass windows.

The exhibition displays a total of 12 works and 12 projects by the Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver, including drawings, sketches, watercolours, models and sculptures, held by the Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.  Many of these works remained unpublished until their cataloguing by the curators and they are on display to the public for the first time ever.  

Palazuelo's creative method includes the use of sketching paper, whose transparency enabled him to superimpose different sketches while developing his works. This is a system he learned in his initial training as an architect at the City of Oxford School of Arts and Crafts, where he studied between 1933 and 1936.

Image Credit:

Pablo Palazuelo alongside the oil paintings Accord Noir (1958) and Imagination du Temps I (1958). Galapagar, c. 1958. Photo: Enrique Palazuelo. © Pablo Palazuelo Foundation