Pablo Zelaya Sierra (October 30, 1896 – 1933) was a Honduran artist and painter. The highest National Prize for Honduran artists carries his name as a tribute.

Biography

Parents and first years

Zelaya Sierra was born on October 30, 1896, in the municipality of

Ojojona Ojojona is a municipality in the Honduran department of Francisco Morazán, located 34 km south of Tegucigalpa. The town is one of the many touristic places of near the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. It is also the place of birth of nota ...

Francisco Morazán Department Francisco Morazán (, abbreviated FMO) is one of the departments of Honduras. It is located in the central part of the nation. The departmental capital is Tegucigalpa, which is also Honduras's national capital. The department is very mountainou ...

. His parents were Felipe Zelaya and Isabel Sierra. From early childhood, he developed his artistic interests and made his way to study at the School of Fine Arts in the neighboring Republic of

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

in 1918–1919.

Decade in Spain

In 1920, Zelaya Sierra traveled to

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

to study art at the Royal Academy of Fine arts of Saint Fernando, thanks to a scholarship from the Spanish Cooperation Agency in Honduras, thus becoming a disciple of

Manuel Benedito Manuel Benedito Vives (25 December 1875 – 20 June 1963) was a Spanish painter. He was born in Valencia on Christmas 1875. His father was a taxidermist, and his brother was a musician. At age 13, he was enrolled in the San Carlos School of ...

and

Daniel Vázquez Díaz Daniel Vázquez Díaz (January 15, 1882 – March 17, 1969) was a Spanish painter. Biography Born in Nerva, Spain, Vázquez Díaz settled in Paris in 1918, where he found cubism to be the ideal form of expression. Unlike other artists such as ...

, one of the major Spanish painters who also lived in Paris beside

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic g ...

and

Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...

. During his time in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, Zelaya Sierra participated in the following events and exhibitions: * National exhibition (Paris, 1922) * '' Salon d'Automne'' and National Exhibition (Paris, 1924) * Exhibition of the Society of Iberian Artists (Paris, 1925) * Individual exhibitions ''Salon des Independents (''Paris, 1924) * Salon of the ''Heraldo de Madrid (''1930) *

Ateneo de Madrid The Ateneo de Madrid ("Athenæum of Madrid") is a private cultural institution located in the capital of Spain that was founded in 1835. Its full name is ''Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid'' ("Scientific, Literary and Artistic ...

(1932) Zelaya Sierra is also the author of an art manifesto: ''Aiming with a Pencil'' (1932), a significant document in understanding the art of his times. The strong and productive ideas of Zelaya Sierra enabled the birth of the modern art in

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

Death

In 1932, back in his native Honduras, his health began to deteriorate. He was rushed to the Saint Felipe Hospital, where he died at the age of 36 due to a massive

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

Work

In Zelaya Sierra's proposal, there is a multiplicity of formal appropriations that range from the use of Renaissance

Chiaroscuro In art, chiaroscuro ( , ; ) is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to ach ...

to the concepts of the Spanish painting movement of the period, and then progress into

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

. This was achieved later through his teachers Benedito and Vásquez Díaz. Zelaya Sierra assumed aesthetic conditions like gravitational core, finding no problems on focusing closely on the Honduran social reality of the times. In fact, his

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

in 1932 features paintings illustrating the social and political conflicts of the times, such as "Brothers against Brothers", a magnificent painting in which he gathered the deep pain and the fear prevalent during one of the many ''guerras intestinas'' (civil wars) that shook the Honduran country in that decade. The painting marks his way of denouncing the harm and pain that a man inflicts upon his fellow men during a civil war. It is a moving, terrible and violent painting.

Homage

* The National Prize for the Honduran Arts carries his name in his honour. * In 1991, the Cultural Center of Spain in Tegucigalpa devoted the II Anthology of the Plastic and Visual Arts of Honduras to “Pablo Zelaya Sierra”.Embajada de España en Honduras/AECID

"Antología de las Artes Plásticas y Visuales de Honduras Pablo Zelaya Sierra". 1991

References

Bibliography

* Martínez, José Francisco. ”Honduran literature and his generational process” New editions University, Number 28 of Collection Honduran Letters. Autonomous National University of Honduras, University Publisher. 1987. {{DEFAULTSORT:Zelaya Sierra, Pablo 1933 deaths 1896 births Honduran painters People from Francisco Morazán Department Male painters