Menchu Gal is a Spanish painter from a wealthy, well-educated family. She showed a talent for art at an early age, and took drawing classes from Basque painter Gaspar Montes Iturrioz when she was only seven years old. In 1932 she travelled to Paris and enrolled in the academy of painter Amédée Ozenfant. In 1934 she moved to Madrid and joined the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where her teachers included Aurelio Arteta and Daniel Vázquez Díaz. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she and her family fled to France. In 1943 she returned to Madrid, where Gutiérrez Solana introduced her into the circle of landscape artists known as the 'Second School of Vallecas'. She soon became part of the 'Young School of Madrid'. From then on she began to work on landscapes, mainly of the high plateau of Castile and of her home region, using bright colours that synthesised the conquests in terms of form of Fauvism, cubism, abstract art and a degree of surrealism. She also produced portraits, still-lifes and nudes.
Her first solo exhibition in 1942 was followed by several more, including an anthology of her work at the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián (1986), a retrospective at the Museum of Navarre in Pamplona (1993) and posthumous exhibitions in the Sala de Armas hall of the Citadel in Pamplona (2011) and at the Institute of Modern Art of Valencia (2012). She also took part in international events such as the Venice Biennale (1950 & 1956) and the Hispano-American Art Biennial (1952 & 1954). She received numerous distinctions, including the National Award for Painting in 1959 (the first time that it had been awarded to a woman) and the Gold Medal of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa in 2005. The Menchu Gal Gallery in Irun opened in 2010.
Menchu Gal is a Spanish painter from a wealthy, well-educated family. She showed a talent for art at an early age, and took drawing classes from Basque painter Gaspar Montes Iturrioz when she was only seven years old. In 1932 she travelled to Paris and enrolled in the academy of painter Amédée Ozenfant. In 1934 she moved to Madrid and joined the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where her teachers included Aurelio Arteta and Daniel Vázquez Díaz. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she and her family fled to France. In 1943 she returned to Madrid, where Gutiérrez Solana introduced her into the circle of landscape artists known as the 'Second School of Vallecas'. She soon became part of the 'Young School of Madrid'. From then on she began to work on landscapes, mainly of the high plateau of Castile and of her home region, using bright colours that synthesised the conquests in terms of form of Fauvism, cubism, abstract art and a degree of surrealism. She also produced portraits, still-lifes and nudes.
Her first solo exhibition in 1942 was followed by several more, including an anthology of her work at the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián (1986), a retrospective at the Museum of Navarre in Pamplona (1993) and posthumous exhibitions in the Sala de Armas hall of the Citadel in Pamplona (2011) and at the Institute of Modern Art of Valencia (2012). She also took part in international events such as the Venice Biennale (1950 & 1956) and the Hispano-American Art Biennial (1952 & 1954). She received numerous distinctions, including the National Award for Painting in 1959 (the first time that it had been awarded to a woman) and the Gold Medal of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa in 2005. The Menchu Gal Gallery in Irun opened in 2010.