Anselmo Miguel Nieto (1881 - 1964)

Anselmo Miguel Nieto studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. Thanks to a grant from his hometown, Valladolid, he was able to live and paint in Rome and Paris between 1900 and 1906. He sent paintings to the Spanish National Exhibitions of 1901, 1904, 1906 and 1910, winning third prize in 1904 and 1906. In fact, the last third prize - for a painting universally deemed worthy of the first - leads Miguel Nieto to reject the Spanish national exhibitions and to seek recognition elsewhere. His paintings have been very well received in other important art centers. In Buenos Aires, Miguel Nieto received the gold medal at the International Exhibition of 1910 and he was very successful at the International Exhibition in Paris the same year. In 1912 he showed at the regional exhibition in Valladolid and an exhibition of his own work in Madrid was a great success. In 1913, he exhibited in Saint-Louis and Munich, and traveled for the first time to Argentina. Miguel Nieto's paintings, especially his portraits, were extremely popular in Argentina and in 1922 he and an artist friend from Cordoba, Julio Romero de Torres, moved to Buenos Aires where the Salón Whitcomb dedicated an exhibition to them in 1923. In time , Miguel Nieto left Argentina for Chile. He remained abroad during the Spanish Civil War, returning to Spain only after the end of World War II, in 1946.