Leonardo Alenza y Nieto was a Spanish painter and engraver in the Romantic style.
Background
Leonardo Alenza was born Leonardo Alenza y Nieto on November 6, 1807 in Madrid, Spain. His father, Valentín, was a government employee and amateur poet, who succeeded in having some poems published in the Diario de Madrid. His mother died around 1813, when he was only six or seven.
In 1817, his father remarried. His step-mother was only eleven years older than he was. Soon after, the family moved from the busy neighborhood where they lived, to a quieter street near a Jesuit convent.
Education
Attracted the painting as a child, he studied at the Academy of San Fernando, under the direction of Madrazo, Aparicio and Ribera.
Career
In 1833, painted by custom, two pictures of historical circumstances: the science and arts mourning the death of Fernando VII and proclamation of Elizabeth II.
Later, in 1835, he painted death of Daoiz. However, the bulk of its production is made up of small-size oil paintings and drawings of popular songs with a touch of irony, that sometimes come to the satire, as is the case with the pair of squares parody titled the romantic, that made him the main figure of the Spanish traditional romanticism; in this series, it gives a distorted image of the romantic artist similar to which Mesonero Romanoshad given of the romantics in his matritenses scenes.
Unfortunately, the critics of his time despised his art and he ended his days ruined completely; somehow, this rejection of the work of Alenza has continued over time and is the explanation of unjustified ignorance of one of the first artists of the romantic period Spanish, comparable to the best of the Goyas.
Alenza knew no rival in terms of its ability to observe reality, the ease of drawing and expertise in the application of those dark colors so characteristic of his art, although he knew how to dominate other many records.
He painted pictures of barriobajeras scenes, villains, frauds, blind copleros, Gypsies and other types and folkloric scenes according to the taste of the moment, as the built-in collection Spaniards painted by themselves. It reflected the popular element of the Spain between the end of the war of independence and the half of century years. His style shows reflections of Goya, which never had the commitment of copy: If artistic matches, these were due to the strength of the environment.
He died in 1845 at the age of only thirty-eight. He had become quite poor by then, and his friends had to intervene to prevent his burial in a common grave.
