ORLANDO PELAYO ENTRIALGO (Gijón, 1920 - Oviedo, 1990).

ORLANDO PELAYO ENTRIALGO (Gijón, 1920 - Oviedo, 1990). "Woman with flowers". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower central margin. Provenance: French private collection. Size: 35 x 28 cm; 48 x 39 cm (frame). Pelayo's painting will be essentially Parisian, and his language will evolve from the initial figuration towards abstraction, behind which, paradoxically, an authentic or imagined reality is hidden. The work in question reveals certain cubist echoes typical of his period in the French capital, although it reflects the powerful brushstroke and expressionist taste that accompanied him throughout his career. A universally acclaimed painter and engraver who belonged to the new Parisian school, Orlando Pelayo spent his early years between Badajoz and Albacete. Exiled in Algeria after the Civil War, he held his first solo exhibition at the age of twenty-four and in 1946 took part, to considerable acclaim, in a group exhibition organised at the Oran Museum, which also included artists such as Picasso, Matisse and other great contemporary painters. His fame reached Paris, where he took up residence in 1947 and became part of the local artistic life. With a painting entitled "L'enfant mort" he confirmed in Paris the fame that had preceded him, and from then on his work was admired in the main capitals of the world. He was awarded a prize at the Menton Biennial in 1953, and in 1955 he was awarded the Otto Friesz Grand Prix. In subsequent years he was awarded prizes in Paris, and his paintings were to appear in important collections not only in France and Spain, but also in Mexico, Algeria, Sweden, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, Switzerland and Luxembourg. His return to Spain was belated, when political circumstances permitted. In 1984 he was appointed Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and a few months before his death he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Principality of Asturias, while the Oviedo City Council's commission for culture had approved his nomination for the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. In the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias there is a permanent exhibition of a good sample of his work, a total of more than fifty paintings donated by the artist himself.