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Biografy

Joaquín Ruiz Peinado, known as Joaquín Peinado
(Ronda, Málaga, 1898- París, 1975)

In 1915 Peinado began his studies at the School of Commerce in Seville, which he would quickly leave behind for painting, encouraged by two friends of the family, the Brazilian artists (and recent arrivals to Paris), Mario and Darío Barbosa. In 1918 he arrives in Madrid to enrol at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts.During the next years he becomes part of the artistic life in the capital, meets Maruja Mallo, Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, Carlos Sáenz de Tejada, Francisco Bores, Benjamín Palencia, José Moreno Villa, and so on.

For three years consecutively (1921-1923) he lives at the El Paular Residence for Landscape Painters, a training period for him, one that would be dominated by a figurative naturalism and natural studies.The following year he moves to Paris on his own, after his application to the Board of Advanced Scientific Research was rejected.There he continues his training; he goes to classes at the Ranson, Colarossi and La Grande Chaumière Academies and establishes friendships with Picasso, Luis Buñuel, Zervos, Pancho Cossío, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Hernando Viñes and Francisco Bores, among others.

In 1924 he participates in the most prestigious official exhibits in Paris: the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon des Surindépendants and the Salon d’Automne. His friendship with Picasso allows him to get close to this art, thus his works revolve around Post-Cubism and the newly formed styles of Realism, above all those of a Neo-classical nature.

In 1923 he participates in the first Exhibit of the Society of Iberian Artists held at the Retiro Palace in Madrid.During his short stay in Ronda he is the artistic consultant and creator of several sets for the film Carmen, by the Belgian director Jacques Feyder.

In 1926 he travels to Amsterdam to work on El retablo de Maese Pedro by Manuel de Falla, and in 1927 he receives the Award for Painting from City Council of Malaga.Around this time he contributes to the magazine called Litoral, in Malaga, to La Gaceta Literaria, in Madrid, to Gallo, in Granada, and he illustrates La Flor de Californía, by José María Hinojosa.

He shows his work in 1929 at two large exhibits of modern avant-garde Spanish art.The first is the Exhibit of Spanish Painters and Sculptors Living in Paris, at Madrid’s botanical garden.The second is the Regional Exhibit of Modern Art, at the “Casa de los Tiros” Centre in Granada, where he is given an award.He will exhibit here again at two editions of its Permanent Art Salons.

In 1931 Peinado returns once again to Spain, this time with his wife, Inger Hausen and his daughter (born in 1929). This same year, in Paris, he accepts the position of Vice-Secretary of National Tourism. However, eager to set up residence in Spain, he requests a transfer to Gibraltar, a place he had ties to since his childhood. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War hastened his return to Paris. There, active in the Republican (Loyalist) cause, he helps to make propaganda, but soon the invasion of Paris by German troops would force him to flee to Bordeaux and Toulouse.After being held in various concentration camps, he manages to return to an occupied Paris.

During the nineteen-forties, like many of his cohorts, Peinado tries to survive the socio-political conditions of the times. In 1946 he participates in a large exhibit held in Prague organised by Spanish artists living in Paris, entitled Art of Republican Spain: Artists of the Parisian School.This would later be transferred to Brno.

Later he would travel to Italy and repeatedly through the Americas –Buenos Aires, Mexico, Venezuela, and New York.In these places he exhibited his later compositions in which drawings and his personal schemes inherited from Post-cubism played an important role.In 1961 he takes part in a tribute to Picasso at the Museum of Man and also one to Antonio Machado at the Maison de la Pensée Français in Paris.Shortly after this, his work is the subject of exhibits in various cities around the world, such as Belgrade, London, Lima, Stockholm, Paris, etc.

His definitive return to Spain takes place in 1969, in order to attend the Exhibit on Spanish Artists of the Parisian School being held at the Board of Fine Arts (Dirección General de Bellas Artes) in Madrid.This same year Peinado is named member of the Royal Academy of San Telmo in Malaga.After his death in 1975 several tributes are held in his honour, perhaps the most notable of these being the exhibits in Paris and at the Athenaeum in Madrid. I. G. G.