Exhibitions
The Marc Domènech Gallery opens Palencia vs Serzo, an intergenerational dialogue with the heritage of the Escuela de Vallecas
Rereadings of the Escuela de Vallecas: dialogue between past and present at the Barcelona Gallery Weekend.
Palencia vs Serzo: Prelude to a III Escuela de Vallecas is an artistic proposal that stands as a kind of symbolic refoundation and, at the same time, as a bridge of intergenerational dialogue with one of the most unique and poetic movements of Spanish art of the 20th century: the mythical Escuela de Vallecas. A temporary exhibition at the Galeria Marc Domènech that can be seen until October 31.
This initiative is not limited to a mere historical review, but seeks to reactivate the experimental, collective and telluric spirit that characterized that group of artists —among whom Benjamín Palencia and Alberto Sánchez stand out—, who found in the landscape of Castile a space for aesthetic and spiritual research.
Benjamín Palencia, Cart and mules, 1940.
In this contemporary “prelude”, the dialogue between Palencia and Serzo becomes an exploration of the validity of that spirit: the connection between art and territory, between matter and myth, between memory and future. The project thus proposes a new reading of the Escuela de Vallecas, not as a closed episode in history, but as a living source of artistic thought and poetic resistance to the uniformity of the present.
This exhibition is part of the General Program of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2025 and is complemented by the exhibition Around the Escuela de Vallecas, included in the FLASH Program, which can be visited exclusively from September 18 to 21. This project brings together a selection of representative works by artists such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Francisco Bores, Julio González, Joaquín Torres-García and Alberto Sánchez, among others, and is enriched with a careful presentation of period materials —magazines, documents and other visual evidence— that allow a deeper understanding of the cultural and artistic environment in which the legendary Escuela de Vallecas was conceived and developed.
José Luis Serzo, Vallecano Shareholder, 2024.
The exhibition, conceived as an intimate and poetic dialogue between the works, landscapes and concerns of Benjamín Palencia (Barrax, Albacete, 1894 – Madrid, 1980) and José Luis Serzo (Albacete, 1977), is presented as a meditative return to the discreet but persistent influence that the La Mancha master has exerted on Serzo throughout his career. In this symbolic encounter, the current artist evokes the presence of Palencia as a tutelary shadow, an ancient voice that continues to resonate in his own creative research. As he himself points out, “the idea of refounding the Escuela de Vallecas has been with me for some time”, and it is from this fascination that his works become a space of speculation and intuition, a kind of open stage where multidisciplinary actions inspired by Palencia and the adventurous spirit of the people of Vallecas are deployed.
Made up of drawings, paintings, sculptures, some photographs and an audiovisual piece, the exhibition invites the viewer to embark on a multidisciplinary journey through the connections and frictions between the past and the present. Moving away from any trace of customs or landscape nostalgia, a poetic rereading of the root is proposed as a path towards what is universal, transforming the territory into a symbolic space from which to rethink the role of art, the periphery and identity in this era of hyper-connection and cultural dissolution.
