José Guerrero

JOSÉ GUERRERO (Granada, 1914 - Barcelona, 1991).
Untitled, 1981.
Silkscreen on paper. Copy 32/75.
Bibliography: DÍAZ, Elena and JIMÉNEZ-BLANCO, Dolores: José Guerrero, Graphic Work, Catalogue Raisonné 1950-1991. José Guerrero Center. Granada, 2017. Pp. 143-144 Cat. no. 53.
Presents stamp on the back of the gallery Fúcares (Madrid).
Signed and justified in pencil in the lower area.
Measurements: 77 x 55,5 cm; 83 x 61,5 cm (frame).
Spanish painter and engraver nationalized American, José Guerrero developed his work within the abstract expressionism. He began his training at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in Granada, and soon moved to Madrid to continue his studies at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he was a student of Daniel Vázquez Díaz, who recommended that he continue his academic training in New York. In 1942 he obtained a scholarship from the Casa de Velázquez, and in 1945 he moved to Paris thanks to a new scholarship, this time granted by the French government. In the French capital he learned first-hand about the European avant-garde, and came into contact with the Spanish painters of the School of Paris. In the fifties, he discovered the abstract expressionism of the New York school. After studying English in London, Guerrero moved to New York in 1950, encouraged by his wife, the New York journalist Roxana Pollock, whom he had married a year earlier. In 1954 he exhibited with Joan Miró at the Art Club of Chicago, an exhibition that meant his definitive international projection. His dealer would be Betty Parsons, one of the most important gallery owners in New York at the time, gallery owner of important artists such as Pollock, Rothko, Clifford Still or Barnett Newman. During his stay in America, Guerrero's style changed completely, showing a profound influence of Rothko and Kline; he definitively abandoned figuration and built compositions where a marked tension between spaces, colors and unrecognizable objects is evident. He returned to Spain in 1965, and participated in the creation of the Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca. He soon returned to New York, although he continued to make trips to Spain. His production, which continues to be characterized by the power of masses of color, planes and lines, is influenced at this time by Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman. Today, José Guerrero is recognized as one of the most outstanding Spanish painters of the New York School. He achieved early recognition, being named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 1959. Likewise, in 1976 his first anthological exhibition was held in his hometown. In 1984 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, and in 1989 he was decorated by the Rodriguez Acosta Foundation.