Jose Luis Fuentetaja

JOSE LUIS FUENTETAJA (Madrid, 1951).
"Beggar".
Oil on paper glued to board.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 40 x 54 cm.
José Luis Fuentetaja starts working in advertising at the age of thirteen, while attending the School of Arts and Crafts of Vallecas. A year later he travels to Geneva, where he comes into direct contact with painting and decides to devote himself to it exclusively. On his return to Spain he enrolled in Fine Arts, and in 1966 he visited Sitges for the first time, where he returned every year and later took up residence. In these years he began to sell his paintings at the Rastro in Madrid and later in Sitges, in the street. In this way he completes his studies and survives economically. When he is in Madrid he receives classes from Pedro Mozas in Fine Arts, and begins to know painting deeply. In 1969 he begins to paint street portraits. In Sitges he creates, with other friends, a rich pictorial environment in the Paseo de la Ribera, in front of the sea, which still exists today. It was also at this time that he began his travels through Europe, painting views of Paris, London and Amsterdam. During these bohemian years he moved every winter to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for five years, and there he settled in the Parque de Santa Catalina, where he worked and came into direct contact with the different characters that populated the streets of the city, something that would mark the subsequent development of his painting. In 1969 he befriends Sidney Nagley, who organizes his first exhibition in Toronto. Shortly thereafter he left his studies and began to paint exclusively in his studio. In 1970 he held his first exhibition in Spain, held at the Ateneo de Barcelona. During these years he made friends with the art critic of "La Vanguardia", Fernando Gutiérrez, and the Count of Caralt commissioned him the illustrations for a new edition of "Romancero gitano" by García Lorca. Some time later he held his first exhibition in a commercial gallery, which took place in the Majestic Gallery in Barcelona, with a splendid collection of nude drawings that earned him notable success. During these years he obtained a scholarship to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome, which he had to give up, however, because he was obliged to do his military service. A few days before joining the army, in 1973, he inaugurated an important exhibition of hyperrealist paintings at the Quatre Gats gallery in Palma de Mallorca. Since then, intense work and the struggle to improve day by day have marked the pattern of this painter's life. The search for styles and situations, the travels through Europe always attentive to the plastic novelties, have placed him in the pictorial line that he develops at the present time. During the last twenty years he has alternated his work between his two workshops, in Sitges and Goa (India); the chromatic and luminous explosion of India and Nepal have defined his language since then. Throughout his career, Fuentetaja has shown his work both in Spain and in Milan, Geneva, New York, Sintra, Lisbon, Miami and Toronto.