Word: palencia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cost of Living. In Palencia, Spain, Angel Gonzalez Garcia, 36, threw himself in front of a passing truck, which crashed into a wall, ran in front of another, which rolled down a 20-ft. embankment, escaped from the two angry drivers by jumping on a nearby horse, galloping to a railroad bridge where he tied a rope around his neck and tried to hang himself, was cut down breathless but unhurt by passersby, ended up in jail charged with damages to the trucks...
Last summer, at Venice's big Biennale, gallerygoers got a glimpse of a fresher trend in Spanish painting, the work of a stay-at-home named Benjamin Palencia. Palencia's boldly colored, unsophisticated commentaries on Spanish country life were neither hidebound nor self-consciously revolutionary. This spring when Palencia, now 50, had a one-man show at Madrid's Museum of Modern Art, critics boasted: "Spain has a great new painter . . . the richest temperament since Goya...
...Palencia began his straightforward observations of rural Spain as a child herding sheep on the arid plain of La Mancha, where Don Quixote started on his famous travels. At nine, Palencia's sketches of animals and lively peasant fiestas caught the eye of Don Rafael López Egoniz, a well-to-do Spanish engineer and art collector. He persuaded Benjamin's parents to let him take the youngster back to Madrid as his ward. There he set the boy to studying the great Spanish masters, but carefully kept him out of Madrid's traditionalist art schools...
This week, with his successful Madrid show behind him, Palencia is still in search of beauty. From his summer headquarters in an old mill on a hilltop near Avila, he starts out each morning accompanied by an old shepherd who guides him along mountain trails until he finds some scene that catches his eye. By autumn, he hopes to have 30 or 40 new sun-and space-filled canvases for next year's show in Madrid. "I am still far from reaching total maturity," says white-haired Palencia. "But I am on the right path...