Ocaña; José Pérez Ocaña

"OCAÑA," JOSÉ PÉREZ OCAÑA (Cantillana, 1947–Seville, 1983).
Untitled, 1983.
Watercolor on paper.
Features a watercolor and pencil drawing on the reverse.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 19.5 x 14.5 cm.
Created during the final year of the artist’s life, this watercolor embodies the spontaneity and expressive freedom that characterize José Pérez Ocaña’s work. Through spontaneous brushwork and a luminous palette, the composition brings together schematic faces and symbolic forms that evoke the artist’s intimate and poetic universe, where imagination, memory, and the popular Andalusian imagination intertwine without hierarchy.
Ocaña began his artistic career after settling in Barcelona in 1971, where he became a central figure in the cultural effervescence of the Transition. Linked to the bohemian and countercultural scene of Las Ramblas, he developed an artistic practice that integrated painting, performance, and life action, influenced by Dadaism and the work of Marc Chagall. He gained recognition in 1977 with the documentary *Ocaña, retrato intermitente* by Ventura Pons and his first major exhibition at the Mec Mec gallery, which propelled his international profile. Throughout his career, he incorporated influences from his travels without straying from the popular Andalusian imagination, becoming a multifaceted, provocative artist and a pioneer of performance art in Spain. His paintings, characterized by an expressionist and naïve style, and his spontaneously drawn sketches constitute an intimate testimony to his surroundings and to a conception of art that is inseparable from his own way of life.