I. Formation and influences
"I entered the School of Arts and Crafts in the city of Oxford, which had a department of Architecture. This school later acquired a certain fame due to the architects who were trained there. I had a wonderful time. Half the race I did very easily."
Pablo Palazuelo
This section deals with the two projects that illustrate the initial periods of Palazuelo's work. On the one hand, his formative journey is reconstructed through the graphic narration allowed by the works and projects preserved during his architectural studies in Oxford (1933-36). It configures a period where the knowledge began years before was consolidated when he was studying his preparation for admission to the University of Madrid, and during which he acquired the knowledge, instruments and graphic resources that he implemented in his extensive production.
Hotel on Calle Princesa, Madrid 1961. Palazuelo, Aguirre y Melgarejo, Deluxe Hotel Building. Preliminary Plans. Structure, 1961. Ink on tracing paper 47 x 59.4 cm. Courtesy of Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.
II. Habitable enclosures
"There is an important attention to the process (…). I think there is a relationship at a certain level, (...) of the painter who paints, or the sculptor who carves, however close to current sculpture and even to architecture. The modern sculptor projects large pieces, which is the general trend of the most advanced sculpture, which is very close to architecture."
Pablo Palazuelo
Together with his brother, the architect Juan Palazuelo, Pablo was involved in three projects where he designed or redefined the architectural envelopes, as well as the intramural transition treatment of the enclosure. These commissions —which took place both during his years in Paris and after his return to Spain— served in turn as well-known graphic witnesses to the evolution of his formal and theoretical research. The projects are: a Hotel on Calle Princesa in Madrid in 1961, remodelling works on the family home in Galapagar (1950-65) and the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Castillo de Monroy (1970-1985).
III. Labyrinthine constructions
"The labyrinth is the place or conformation whose capacity for the generation of forms is abysmal, it has no limit."
Pablo Palazuelo
Palazuelo speculated with the possibility of configuring labyrinths from his symbolic formal imaginary, since he defined them as a type of manifestation of spatial forces. In this section, two projects and one work have been selected. Two of the designs are part of his collaboration with patron Juan Huarte: one, the installation in the Hisa Halls (1960-67), a space previously designed by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza; and a coffered ceiling made of redwood and oak on the ceiling of the Residence for Juan Huarte (1965), where the influence of the Spanish-Arabic tradition can be appreciated. Decades later, Palazuelo produced the installation Indret (1996), a proposal made up of 16 modules made from MDF (chipboard), which aspired to configure the exhibition space of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).
IV. Horizontal extension
"From shell to shell, we would arrive at a place where the reflection of even more complex structures, further away, tends to fade when our attention approaches a kind of horizon that limits the possibilities of knowledge, which is ours."
Pablo Palazuelo
"In space, the line is one more form, which is only a limit or border when you want it to be because the line is the section, the threshold, the transit towards the other, the new, the unknown."
Pablo Palazuelo
After spending almost thirty years exploring the possibilities offered by the horizontal plane, Palazuelo embarked on new commissions that led him to a new challenge: transcending the graphic framework to colonize interior canvases or facade thresholds. His designs focus on the interior of the lobbies, such as the project for the Auxiliary Building of the Bank of Spain (1988), by Corrales y Molezún, or the sculptural mural that he created in front of the circular staircase of the Torre Picasso (1988- 90), the work of Yamasaki, among others.
Pablo Palazuelo. No title. 1989 Pencil and ink on paper 51 x 70 cm. Courtesy of the Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.
VI. Transit thresholds
"The number is a gateway to the unknown."
Pablo Palazuelo
Few elements materialize the transit space as clearly as the door. The symbolic form of the demarcation within the Sufi tradition, since it represents the movement through space and time hierarchizing them, constitutes the entrance to a different place, it is the beginning or the end of a trip. Pablo Palazuelo covered the access areas with different degrees of intensity. From the intricate geometries of the project for the doors of the old Convent of San Basilio Magno (1991), at the University of Alcalá, to the aluminium cladding in the installation that he proposed for the Soledad Lorenzo Gallery (1996-97).
VII. Light drawings
"Light is material vibration, it is energy that when combined with other energy such as matter, enters into resonance with it, colouring each other."
Pablo Palazuelo
His exploration of the enclosure planes reached a phase of greater sophistication from the reinterpretation of the delicate work with the chrome glass of one of the architectural movements that most fascinated Palazuelo, the Gothic. The reason for this fascination resided in the remarkable latent potential that Palazuelo granted to the fact of being able to draw with light. To illustrate this, the proposals for a House in Valdemorillo (1984-86) or the rose window of the parish church of San Salvador in Guetaria (1995-96), among others, have been selected.
VIII. Domestic design
"Enlightenment is or is not, illusory illumination does not exist. Clarity is or is not, false clarity does not exist."
Pablo Palazuelo
Instead of pursuing the total work of art, Palazuelo was forced to separate his forays into architecture from those relating to domestic design. However, occasionally the commissions were developed at various levels of action, such as the design for the carpet in the Bankinter lobby whose composition works as a reflection of the paintings on the ceiling.
IX. Urban dimension
"I think there is a scale of what is important for the future of humanity. And another scale of what is anecdotal and temporary."
Pablo Palazuelo
Very excited to resume his facet as a sculptor in 1977, Palazuelo made various pieces that he premonitorily titled Project for a monument, although later these projects suffered frequent cancellations. Among the designs with which this exhibition closes, these extremes are illustrated: the impulse of the beginnings and the beginning of their disappointments. Commissions ranging from the sculptures for the Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre (1977-78) in Madrid, to the Barcelona sites of the Parque de la España Industrial (1985) and the works for the Tribute to Verdaguer (1995).
![Pablo Palazuelo, Untitled [Project for Bankinter], 1976. Gouache and ink on paper, 66 x 50.3 cm. Painting for the lobby of Bankinter, Madrid (1974-77). Courtesy of Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.](/sites/default/files/metalocus_palazuelo-peraleda_museo-ico_02_0.jpg "Pablo Palazuelo, Untitled [Project for Bankinter], 1976. Gouache and ink on paper, 66 x 50.3 cm. Painting for the lobby of Bankinter, Madrid (1974-77). Courtesy of Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.")
