Preludio de una III Escuela de Vallecas. Benjamín Palencia, José Luis Serzo
On the 18th of September, Galeria Marc Domènech will open the exhibition entitled Palencia vs Serzo: Prelude to a III Escuela de Vallecas, a proposal that presents both a symbolic refounding and, at the same time, an intergenerational dialogue with one of the most singular movements in twentieth-century Spanish art: La Escuela de Vallecas (the School of Vallecas).
The exhibition, conceived as a direct conversation between the work, landscapes and obsessions of artists Benjamín Palencia (Barrax, Albacete, 1894 – Madrid, 1980) and José Luis Serzo (Albacete, 1977), represents a conscious return to the silent yet persistent influence that Serzo has long received from his fellow Manchegan. For Serzo, “the idea of refounding the Vallecas School has been with me for some time. With these works, I speculate and intuit multidisciplinary actions inspired by Palencia and the Vallecas adventure.”
Far from being a nostalgic homage, Prelude to a III Escuela de Vallecas is presented as an artistic, speculative and dialogic action that seeks to reactivate the drive of Benjamín Palencia and Alberto Sánchez, founders of an autonomous visual expression deeply rooted in Madrid’s periphery. In its early stages, the Escuela de Vallecas (a term proposed by Alberto Sánchez in 1960) brought together a constellation of artists, sculptors and poets who broke with official languages. Among them were Maruja Mallo, Juan Manuel Díaz Caneja, Luis Castellanos, Pancho Lasso, Antonio Rodríguez Luna, as well as poets Rafael Alberti, José Bergamín, Luis Felipe Vivanco and Federico García Lorca, who accompanied and enriched the experience with their lyrical and revolutionary vision.
Taking Benjamín Palencia’s work as its starting point, José Luis Serzo wants the resulting artistic dialogues of this juxtaposition to also converse with that plural, heterodox and radically modern legacy, updating its initial impulse and projecting it towards the establishment of a possible Third Escuela de Vallecas – open to new languages, media and collective practices. With an earthy, deliberately dark palette and a neo-baroque aesthetic, Serzo reveals the original spirit of that Vallecas initiative through a critical and visionary lens.
The exhibition, comprising drawings, paintings, sculptures, some photographs and a video, also invites us on a multidisciplinary journey through the connections and tensions between past and present. Far from any folkloric nostalgia for the landscape, Serzo proposes a re-signification of the root as a path towards the universal, opening new questions about the place of art, the periphery and identity in these times of hyper-connection and cultural dissolution. In a context marked by digital acceleration and disconnection from the land, this exhibition asserts the body, the walk, matter and memory as the foundations of a renewed aesthetic. The work is presented as a generative proposal, which not only embraces the heritage of Vallecas but also projects it towards a possible, plural, contemporary and committed future. For Serzo, “the refounding of the Vallecas School aims to strengthen local identity in order to reach the universal, revitalising the Spanish art scene and generating a new movement that updates the philosophy of its predecessor.”
This project, with a deeply conceptual character, emerges as an extension of the still unpublished project Muchachos al campo (Boys to the Countryside), developed in collaboration with historian and curator Juan Manuel Bonet, who identified certain spontaneous parallels between the works of Serzo and Palencia. The current exhibition is organised with the collaboration of the Official Archive of Benjamín Palencia, directed by Ramón Palencia Burgo, and the Provincial Council of Albacete.
The exhibition forms part of the General Programme of Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2025 and will be accompanied by the exhibition Around the Escuela de Vallecas, included in the FLASH Programme of the Gallery Weekend and on view only from 18 to 21 September. This project will present representative works by artists such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Francisco Bores, Julio González, Joaquín Torres-García and Alberto Sánchez, among others. It will also display period materials, such as magazines and documents, to contextualise the artistic environment in which the so-called Escuela de Vallecas developed.
The exhibition forms part of the General Programme of Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2025 and will be accompanied by the exhibition Around the Escuela de Vallecas, included in the FLASH Programme of the Gallery Weekend and on view only from 18 to 21 September. This project will present representative works by artists such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Francisco Bores, Julio González, Joaquín Torres-García and Alberto Sánchez, among others. It will also display period materials, such as magazines and documents, to contextualise the artistic environment in which the so-called Escuela de Vallecas developed.
