The aim of the Menchu Gal Foundation is to make known, extend and disseminate the work of one of the most refined and strongest artists of the 20th century, Menchu Gal (Irun, 1919-2008), without forgetting her environment and other artists who had a relationship with her, or had an impact on her work, or were involved in it.
Menchu Gal, a disciple of Amédée Ozenfant, Daniel Vázquez Díaz and Benjamín Palencia, a member of the Vallecas School, and with multiple connections to notable Basque artists such as Aurelio Arteta and Gaspar Montes Iturrioz, has produced an interesting and vast body of work, considered by critics and historians as one of the most significant of those created by a Spanish painter throughout the 20th century.
Like all great artists, Menchu Gal was unsure of her work until her last moments. In this she resembled another great creator, Jorge Oteiza, a great friend and admirer of hers. However, while some of us did not doubt her worth and mastery, she always remained uncertain.
With his death, and in these few years, his work grows, consolidates and emerges as one of the most substantial and racial, along with that of Benjamin Palencia, Rafael Zabaleta and Juan Manuel Diaz Caneja. Landscape painter and portraitist of the soul of the lands of Spain, and of the best characters of his time, he offers a strong, fauvist painting, between cubist and fauvist.
Fauvist, between cubist and expressionist, but always vital, fresh and synthetic. Menchu Gal painted as she breathed, deeply, lucidly, quickly.
And there remain for our enjoyment and delight those pieces of Navarre, the Basque Country and Castile, those portraits that seem to be still in front of us, and that "elam" of hers that seems to fly over everything and still be among us. Menchu is the emotion of painting.
Correos (Spanish Post Office) dedicates in its philatelic series of Painting the work of Menchu Gal titled: Playa de Fuenterrabía (Fuenterrabía Beach) an oil on canvas of a size of 73 x 116 cm.
