José Moreno Villa

JOSÉ MORENO VILLA (Málaga, 1887 - Mexico City, 1955).
Untitled.
Oil on tablex.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 70 x 50 cm.
We see in this work a direct homage to the cubism of the beginning of the XX century, to the plastic and aesthetic investigations of Braque and Picasso, being the result an analytical representation, that decomposes the space and the objects in planes. The author configures a still life that is shown in the purest Juan Gris style, through the capture of different points of view in a single image; the synthesis is no longer reduced to what the eye sees, but to what the mind knows there is.
A multidisciplinary artist belonging to the Generation of '27, José Moreno Villa was a poet, columnist, critic, art historian, draftsman and painter, and during the Second Spanish Republic he was director of the National Palace Archive. At the outbreak of the Civil War he went into exile in America, settling first in the United States and finally in Mexico. He studied chemistry in Germany and art history in Madrid, collaborated with the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and frequented the Residencia de Estudiantes. He became friends with Alberto Sánchez Pérez and Benjamín Palencia, with whom he participated in 1925 in the Exhibition of the Society of Iberian Artists and whom he accompanied in the first School of Vallecas. As an art historian and archivist, he contributed to the investigation of the Spanish artistic heritage and the dissemination of modern architecture from the 1920s onwards; he was the first architecture critic and analyst in the newspaper "El Sol", collaborated with the magazine of the Madrid School of Architecture and organized Le Corbusier's first visit to Spain. Once in Mexico, in his own words, his production became "Mexicanized", and in fact he wrote his "Cornucopia mexicana" (1940) about this country, in addition to writing and publishing his biography there. He is currently well represented in the Museum of Malaga, as well as in the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid and the Carmen Thyssen Museum, among other outstanding collections.