Juan Bandera

JUAN BANDERA PÉREZ (Casarabonela, 1917 - ¿, 1999).
"Mijas", Almería.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 60 x 73 cm; 66 x 80 cm (frame).

Juan Bandera Perez was born in Casarabonela, and around 1920 he moved with his family to live in Malaga, where he began his training: In the School of Arts and Crafts of the city he was a student, receiving drawing classes before he was even ten years old. The director of the School, César Álvarez Dumont, saw the extraordinary faculties of the child, and made him move to the next course (higher class of drawing and painting), for which it was necessary the parental permission to access the child to nude models. The recognition of his career began when he was 17 years old: he won the First Prize for Painting in a Collective Exhibition of Andalusian painters organized by the Free Association of Artists in the Salon of Economy in Malaga, and another First Prize awarded by the same Association for another of his works. These two made him the realization of a large equestrian portrait of the Duke of Seville, commissioned by the Presidency of the Mercantile Circle of Malaga. He then moved to Madrid, with the idea of continuing his training at the School of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. He moved to Bilbao, where he also exhibited his work and made sales. When he returned to Madrid, he was commissioned to paint the Portrait of Captain General Saliquet for the Captaincy of the city. Here he had to alternate his studies at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Madrid with an increasingly abundant work. Tired of the education system, he abandoned formal training, but continued to receive private lessons from Federico Bermudez Gil, teacher and painter. He then went to Paris for a while. Here he met Cabreras, whom he asked to give him restoration classes, which he did in his own workshop. In Bandera's words, "he learned more than in all the schools he had been to", due to the fact that by treating old works he learned the manner and method of the great masters of the past.
His eagerness to travel took him to America for a few years, settling in Mexico in 1965, a country that already attracted him as a child. He returned to Spain on several occasions, both to his hometown and to Malaga, Madrid, etc., for exhibitions, to receive honors such as the appointment of Favorite Son of the town, etc. His work has been seen in Madrid, Malaga, Bilbao, Santander, Paris, California, New York, Mexico, Venezuela, Acapulco, Miami, Marbella, Buenos Aires, Seville, etc., and is preserved in important private collections around the world and in important institutions in several countries, especially those where he has been living and in his birthplace, which he always carried in his heart, as evidenced by the inclusion in his works of elements related to it.