Antonio Pel?ez

(b Llanes, Asturias, 1921). Spanish painter, active in Mexico. He left Spain during the Civil War in 1936 and settled in Mexico, completing his training under Jos? Moreno Villa and Frida Kahlo at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura 'La Esmeralda' in Mexico City. His early work, consisting particularly of portraits and figurative drawings, was featured in his first exhibition, which took place in 1951 with Kahlo's encouragement. His preference for elongated figures in misty and magical settings increasingly gave way to a greater simplification and abstraction. From time to time he returned to figurative work, especially to portraiture, but his art was fundamentally structured by its austere abstract quality, characterized by an interaction of geometrical and graphic elements with richly varied textures and lyrical colours.

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