Biography of Orlando Pelayo
Orlando Pelayo, born in Gijón on December 14, 1920 and died in Oviedo on March 15, 1990 at the age of 69, is a Spanish painter and engraver associated with the new School of Paris.
Orlando Entrialgo Pelayo was born on December 14, 1920 in Gijón, Asturias. He spent his childhood in Extremadura in Monesterio, near Badajoz, and then his adolescence in Albacete in La Mancha. In 1936, he completed his secondary studies just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. After the defeat of the Republicans, to whom he had joined at the age of eighteen, he went into exile in 1939 in Oran, Algeria, with his father, where they were interned in Spanish refugee camps.
His father died in Algeria, a victim of exhausting working conditions and tuberculosis. Pelayo became a Spanish teacher and ceramics decorator. He met Albert Camus, Emmanuel Roblès, Jean Grenier and became friends with the poet Jean Sénac. From 1943, he exhibited his works, then regularly in 1945, 1947, 1950 and 1953 at the avant-garde gallery Colline, directed by Robert Martin in Oran.
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In 1947, Pelayo went to Paris, where he became friends with many Spanish painters. He frequented Montparnasse, where he rubbed shoulders with Dominguez, Francisco Bores, Antoni Clavé, Eduardo Pisano, Xavier Oriach, Atlan and Giacometti, as well as Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he met Nallard, Maria Manton, José Garcia Tella and Poliakoff. One of his works was reproduced in 1950 in the second issue of the magazine *Soleil*, founded in Algiers by Jean Sénac. In 1951, he illustrated a collection of the poet Jean Rousselot.
From 1952, Pelayo exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and then, from 1961 to 1966, participated in the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Indépendants. In October 1963, he was at the Grands et jeunes d'aujourd'hui at the Galerie Charpentier under the patronage of Alexandre Garbell with Eduardo Arroyo, Georges Feher, Albert Bitran, Gustav Bolin and André Cottavoz. In 1967, he exhibited with Eduardo Pisano at the Galerie Vidal. He did not return to Spain until 1967.
His painting, initially freely figurative and then non-figurative in the 1960s, evolved towards a neo-figurative expressionism. Pelayo also produced book illustrations (Gongora, Quevedo) and tapestry cartoons for the Gobelins factory.
Orlando Pelayo died in Oviedo after a long illness at the age of sixty-nine. His artistic career, marked by a rich stylistic evolution, remains an important testimony to the new School of Paris.
