Jose Guerrero. Color y gesto (1947-1969)
José Guerrero
1914 - 1991
EXHIBITIONS
Biography
Granada, 1914 – Barcelona, 1991
He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts of Granada and later at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando, in Madrid, where he was a disciple of Vázquez Díaz. He obtained scholarships from the House of Velázquez and the French Cultural Center of Madrid, with which he lived in Paris in 1945 and 1946, and where he learned fresco painting at the Ecole de Beaux Arts. In 1949 he settled in New York, where he came into contact with Kline, Rothko, Pollock and Motherwell, holding his first exhibition in 1954 at the Betty Parsons Gallery. There he began to make abstract works. Incorporated into the “New York School”, Guerrero participates with his abstract paintings of great lyrical meaning in various exhibitions with action painting painters, although his work was always considered by critics as different, heir to the Spanish, Mediterranean and Andalusian tradition. He received a grant from the Graham Foundation and became a professor of painting and drawing at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1965 he returned to Spain to stay three years. His painting began to be known then and, at the end of the sixties, his influence could already be perceived on young abstract painters. Guerrero’s contacts with Spain increased since then, although he continued to live in New York, and he participated with works in the creation of the Cuenca Museum. In 1959 he received the New Talent award created by the magazine “Art in America”, and was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In 1984 the Spanish government awarded him the Medal of Honor for Fine Arts and in 1989 the Medal of Honor from the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation of Granada. In 2000, the José Guerrero Center in Granada opened its doors to the public for the custody, cataloguing, exhibition and dissemination of the work of the Granada painter, and the promotion of research into his life and artistic production.