Cerro Arequita, Sierras de Minas

Pedro Blanes Viale was without doubt Uruguay's most important painter in the first three decades of the 20th Century. His work, which was initially quite traditional, based in his studies in Madrid at the Academia de San Fernando, began to take the colorist path for which he is most recognized in 1906-1907 during one of his frequent residences in Palma de Mallorca. Though born in Uruguay his work is inextricably linked to Spain, his studies there, his friendship with the Spanish painters Joaqumn Mir and Santiago Rusiqol and the atmospheric Mediterranean color and light of the Balearic island which was his father's home and where his family had returned during his adolescence.
Leaving behind the heavy chiaroscuro of his education Blanes Viale began experimenting with a palate of unusual chromatic intensity, imbuing his work with a colorism that was obviously influenced by and approximated the Impressionists, but without losing an adherence to form. Light and color affects are explored in his work while maintaining and often reinforcing the line of form and shadow. He worked principally in Spain and Paris until in 1916 when he returned to Uruguay and rediscovered the physical magnificence of his home. Like Carlos Saez before him Blanes Viale represented a vanguard in Uruguay by abandoning academic methods and painting in a richly hued, freely sculptural, and immediate manner.