Making use of a virtually monochromatic palette, this exceptional landscape, typical of the best of its kind in Díaz-Caneja’s output, captures the visual power of the Castilian countryside.

Although he arrived in Madrid in 1923 with the intention of studying architecture, his contact with Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1882-1969), whose studio he attended to improve his drawing skills, encouraged him to redirect his attention towards painting. He enrolled at the prestigious intellectual and cultural institution Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and became a member of the

 School of Vallecas 

(1927-1936) founded in 1927 by Benjamín Palencia and Alberto Sánchez with the purpose of renewing Spanish art in line with what was happening elsewhere in Europe. Landscape became the main subject matter of this school, albeit a highly sober landscape influenced by Hispanic primitivism, fauvist colour, a surrealist approach and cubist order. The starting point was the arid, barren land on the outskirts of Madrid in the direction of Toledo, stripped of any superfluous object and worked with economic brushwork and a palette of earthy tones. This take on landscape straddled tradition and modernism. The School of Vallecas disbanded with the outbreak of the Civil War, although it was the only school to rise from its ashes, reborn in the Second School of Vallecas (1939-1942).

. His discovery of cubist painting during a period in Paris in 1929 would exert a great influence on the future direction of his work.

Though he painted many still lifes and figures, the artist’s strongest leaning was towards landscape, and more particularly, a Castilian landscape with echoes of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). However, the scenery is totally different: in lieu of Cézanne’s clear and bluish Provence here we see the rough, dry land of Castile, one of the central motifs defended by Spanish modernism.

Landscape played a critical role in modern painting, both in Spain and abroad. Taking the archetype of French landscape as a reference, the Spanish landscape was modulated on the threshold between structural architecture and supremacy of colour, either seen from an impassioned expressionism or from a more nuanced sensuality.

This work belongs to Díaz-Caneja’s mature, late work. Its indistinct geometric forms and almost monochrome colouring create a seamless fusion between the three planes in the painting, particularly in the case of the reaped fields, rocky areas and houses, whose volume is conveyed through the black marks of the silhouette of some of the buildings.