Orlando Pelayo, a Spanish painter and engraver, is a leading member of the New School of Paris.

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In 1947 he moved to Paris, where he made friends with many of the Spanish painters who frequented the Montparnasse district. He worked alongside artists such as Oscar Dominguez, Francisco Bores and Alberto Giacometti. Pelayo particularly appreciated the play of transparency and glazes of material in his works, creating an abstraction close to figuration, representing fields seen from the sky or ploughed land. His painting, initially freely figurative and then non-figurative in the 1960s, then evolved towards neo-figurative expressionism. His canvases became increasingly refined, while retaining the sensory dimension of places and people.

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Alongside his paintings, Pelayo produced illustrations for books, notably by Gongora and Quevedo, as well as tapestry cartoons for the Gobelins manufactory. His works are exhibited in France, notably at the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, as well as in Spain, in Barcelona and at the Fine Arts Museum in Oviedo, his home town. ‍

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His contribution to twentieth-century art is attested by the numerous exhibitions and retrospectives devoted to him in France and abroad, notably at the Asturias Fine Arts Museum in Oviedo, the Gijón International Art Centre and the Cordeliers Convent in Paris.

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