Carlos Sáenz de Tejada y de Lezama

Tánger (Marruecos) 1897 - Madrid, 1958.

A versatile artist, he began learning art in Oran in 1908 under the supervision of Alicante painter Daniel Cortés. In 1911, he continued his training at Madrid’s School for the Promotion of Arts with masters José María López Mezquita and Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor. In the same year he opened his first exhibition during a summer visit to Oran.

A student of The San Fernando School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving since 1916, in 1920 he obtained a scholarship from Residencia de El Paular. In his vast experience as an illustrator, perhaps most notable are his scenes from everyday life in the era of dictator Primo de Rivera and the Spanish II Republic printed in the newspaper La Libertad, which published works by some of the artists most notoriously associated with the construction of twentieth-century Spanish modernism.

He was an expert in the art of combining the role of the “figurine” as a manner of divulging a specific formal structure, with conveyance of a “style”. His fashion drawings helped _- in writer María Escribano’s words - “to divulge the image of the stylised, elegant and sporty woman of the thirties.” Many of his designs were published in “La Esfera” (1916-1931), “Nuevo Mundo” (1925-1927), “Por Esos Mundos” (1925-1926), “Cosmópolis” (1929-1930), “Blanco y Negro”, and ABC newspaper.

Having won a scholarship from the Continuing Education Board to study mural painting, he moved to Paris in 1926, where he lived intermittently until 1935. It was during those years that he developed his talent as a fashion artist, eventually becoming an internationally-renowned figure, working for magazines such as “Femina”, “Vogue”, “Jardins des Modes” (1926-1927) and “Harper’s Bazaar”, and making his first steps in advertising posters by promoting the Spanish Ballet by Antonia Mercé called “la Argentinita”.

Back in Madrid, he continued to contribute to the Prensa Española publishing group and to magazines published by the government’s Press and Propaganda Office such as “Vértice”, and he became the creative pillar on which the new regime built its ideational structure in the wake of the Civil War, as evidenced by the illustrations he made from 1939 to 1950 for the Banco Central calendar. What at UEE had already been a well-established tradition since the turn of the century was turning into fashion. After the war, Sáenz de Tejada created a peasant scene for the 1940 version of the explosive company’s calendar.

Over the years, and in a variety of styles (costumbrista, epic-naturalist, and even neo-cubist) he illustrated works such as Don Juan Tenorio (1946) by Zorrilla, Los intereses creados (1950) by Jacinto Benavente, or Platero y yo (1957) by Juan Ramón Jiménez. He combined this work with that of art director of companies such as publishers Fournier.

Significant evidence of his creativity during these years included the restoration and mural decoration of a number of institutions in Vitoria, Madrid’s Valley of the Fallen and the Agricultural Research Institute at Madrid’s university campus. These facilities show his evolution towards a regionalist style influenced by Zuloaga and the Zubiaurres from an initial stage nfluenced by Sorolla and Sotomayor. His eclectic spirit made him grow without relinquishing any technical-expressive opportunity.

In the latter years of his life he was a professor at the Madrid School of Arts and Crafts (1941-1950) and the San Fernando School of Fine Arts (1942 until his death). He also won first prize at the Decorative Arts Competition in Madrid in 1947.

María Escribano, art critic, said that he was “… surprisingly modern at times, and he knew how to superimpose the influence of new approaches to instrumentalising art upon his huge talents as an artist and upon his sound training, in what was one of the greatest contributions by the avant-garde movement.”

Most of his work is currently held by the Caja Vital savings bank (previously Caja de Ahorros de Vitoria y Álava).

1940 Carlos Sáenz de Tejada Peasant couple with child Offset lithograph 31 x 28 cm.