Born in rural Galicia, Spain in 1902, Maruja Mallo moved to Madrid in 1922 to receive art training. She quickly became a central figure in the Generation of ‘27, an interdisciplinary group of the Spanish avant-garde that included Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. Mallo received fame for a unique and ambitious surrealism that was at once cosmopolitan and distinctly Spanish. Her emergence in the 1920s is typified by her early painting El Mago / Pim Pam Pum (1926), which depicts a raucous street festival. Mallo's surrealism is also evident in Escaparate (Maniquís) (1928), in which elegant Art Deco stylization is merged with darker, more uncanny impulses.

After meeting Joaquín Torres-Garcia in 1933, Mallo became increasingly interested in mathematics, structure and abstraction. This stylistic shift—through which she remained committed to local observation—is exemplified by an increasing interest in compositional clarity and the symmetrical distribution of forms. Some of Mallo's most canonical works, such as Arquitectura Humana / El Pescador (1937), emerged in dialogue with Torres-Garcia’s advanced theorization of painterly construction. This depiction of a maritime laborer is determined by a rigorous structure that is almost architectural in intent.

Mallo was politically engaged in both art and life. In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she went into exile to Buenos Aires. Encountering new and diverse urban and natural environments, Mallo’s interest in portraiture persisted. Her portraits of women focus on the diversity of feminine beauty in a way that is both programmatic and observational.

Maruja Mallo (b. 1902, Vivero, Spain; d. 1995, Madrid) worked and lived between Spain and Argentina. She was awarded the Gold Medal of Madrid in 1990 and the Gold Medal of the Xunta de Galicia in 1991. She is the subject of a major retropective, “Máscara y Compás,” organized by Centro Bótin, Santander, Spain and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 2010, she was the subject of her first major retrospective and publication organized by the Casa das Artes, Vigo and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. Her work is currently in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires. Her work is also in the collection and on permanent view at the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.