Ginés Parra

GINÉS PARRA (Zurgena, Almería, 1896 - Paris, France, 1960).
Untitled.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed in the inferior zone.
Measurements: 51 x 40 cm.; 77 x 67 cm.(frame).

A dancer flexes her legs adopting a bombastic dance step. With a deliberately naïff tone and synthetic stroke, Parra uses a limited number of colors to intensify the primitivist expression of his search. The influence of the Parisian avant-garde can be appreciated in the painting. Ginés Parra spent his childhood in Algeria, working with his father as a miner. After several trips to Argentina and other South American countries between 1910 and 1916, he moved to the United States. He worked in copper mines in Arizona. He soon moved to New York, where he began taking classes at the Students League. He began his art studies at the National Academy School of Fine Arts in the same city, although he was forced to continue working in the subway and as a waiter to survive. Around 1920 he settled in Paris, in a studio in the Montparnasse district, to continue his training at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Art. Soon after, he establishes contact with other painters such as Pablo Picasso, Julio González or Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, and with them he participates in various exhibitions, such as the Society of French Artists, the Salon d'Automne or the Salon des Indépendants. In 1922 he exhibited with Joaquín Roca at the Du Taureau gallery in Paris and, soon after, one of his most praised works at the Salon des Indépendants, "Leda and the Swan", was acquired by a Boston gallery. Between the thirties and forties his fame was established and he distinguished himself as a member of the New School of Paris. The outbreak of the Civil War surprises Ginés Parra in Madrid, where he decidedly aligns himself with the Republican side, for which he is imprisoned. He only regained his freedom thanks to the intercession of Pancho Cossío. In the following years he exhibited in various cities in Europe and America: in Prague in 1946, Brussels and Stockholm in 1947, London, Lima, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Havana, Buenos Aires... He also continued to hold exhibitions in Paris, and in 1959 he exhibited with Picasso at the Trouche gallery, and with Oscar Dominguez in Brittany. A few months after his death, the Salon des Indépendants dedicates an anthological exhibition to him, and Picasso and other friends create the Society of Friends of Parra. He is represented at the Narodni Muzeum in Prague, the Mosavska Galerie in Brno (Czech Republic), the Museums of Fine Arts in Boston and Havana, the Museum of Art in São Paulo, the Patio Herreriano Museum of Contemporary Art in Valladolid and the ARTIUM in Vitoria, among others.