In Search of Beauty

Spain has bred more than its share of eminent modern artists, among them Picasso, Joan Miro, Juan Gris and Salvador Dali. But most of them have hotfooted it across the border to France almost as soon as they were old enough to carry their own easels. The artists who stayed behind seemingly found it difficult to forget Spain's great artistic past, and followed, without distinction, the traditions of El Greco, Velasquez and Goya.

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 Lopez 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. Later, he took him on a three-year tour of Europe, introduced him to Paris' heady artistic life. Unlike his expatriate countrymen, Palencia found more excitement in Spain's plateaus and peasants than in Paris' studios and cafes, shortly returned to his native land. "I need gaiety and purity for inspiration," he said, "just as I need space and sun." Back in Spain, he packed his easels and brushes, began taking treks through the countryside "like a hungry animal in search of beauty."

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."

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