(Granada, 1914–Barcelona, 1991)

A painter and engraver, José Guerrero is associated with American abstract expressionism. Born into a family of modest means and orphaned at an early age, he worked in a carpenter’s workshop and as an apprentice wood carver, among other occupations, before enrolling in 1931 at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in Granada, which he frequented until 1934. It was at this time that he discovered his true vocation as an artist and started painting, combining his practice with other occupations such as bell ringer at Granada Cathedral. In 1940, after completing his military service, which coincided with the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Madrid. There, he enrolled at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, attending Vázquez Díaz’s classes and the ones on art history imparted by Lafuente Ferrari. In 1942 he took up residence at Casa Velázquez in Madrid, then located on Calle Serrano. During this period, he met Juana Mordó and the person who would soon become his first art dealer, Karl Buchholz. In 1945, having completed his studies at San Fernando, he moved to Paris to take up a scholarship from the French government. It was in that city that he discovered modern art, especially the work of Spanish artists of the School of Paris and the French avant-garde. He subsequently lived in Rome and travelled around Europe, and then in 1949 he relocated to the United States. Initially, he stayed in Philadelphia, the birthplace of his wife, journalist Roxanne Whittier Pollock, whom he had married on 25 April 1949, but in 1950 he settled in New York. This marked the beginning of his experiments with new materials and his association with abstraction. He soon established contact with Betty Parsons, who introduced him into the circles of the New York School. After an intense American period, Guerrero returned to Spain in 1965 and established close contact with Juana Mordó’s gallery and the group of abstract painters connected with the museum in Cuenca. Soon after, he purchased a farmhouse near Granada and started spending long periods there. In 1968 he returned to the United States, working as a teacher and taking part in numerous exhibitions in both America and Europe. One of his most important shows took place in 1980 at the Sala de las Alhajas in Madrid, which cemented his status as a leading artist of contemporary Spanish painting.