José Pérez Gil

JOSE PÉREZ GIL (Albacete, 1918 - Alicante, 1998).
"Characters in procession", 1987.
Lithograph on paper. Copy 413/580.
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 41 x 59 cm.
A direct heir to Alicante landscape painting, Pérez Gil transferred the whole Spanish geography to his works and knew how to verbalise his vision of the landscape, conceived in principle as an abstract, dispersed entity, which he gave an identity, a name and surnames to the capture of the landscape. In 1929 he entered the Alicante secondary school to study for his baccalaureate. When he finished his classes he went to the Academy of Drawing, run by Manuel Cantos, where he learnt how to handle the charcoal pencil, aquatint, brushes and the technique for mixing oil colours. He was enrolled in the Escuela de Artes Oficios (School of Arts and Crafts) where he was recognised by teachers and classmates for his drawing technique. At the age of fourteen he painted his first pictures and entered several youth competitions, winning various awards. It was at the Exhibition of New Painters, organised by the Alicante Athenaeum in 1935, where he won first prize for "Atardecer en la Condomina" (Sunset at the Condomina). Later he worked as an apprentice in the plaster workshop of Ramón Ripoll, in the Casa Devesa as a sign painter and in the painting workshop of Paco Muñoz. When he became friends with the painter and bonfire maker Gastón Castelló, he began to enter the world of bonfire workshops. He changed jobs again and, together with his friend Vicente Mira, he became a painter and decorator. In 1936 he held his first exhibition, invited by the Ateneo of Alicante, obtaining great success and the applause of the art critics. However, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War his creative process was interrupted by the historical circumstances. At the end of the war he returned to Caudete, his hometown, and later returned to Alicante where he made signs and advertising drawings in order to survive. Finally he moved to Madrid to study at the Central School of Fine Arts of San Fernando. There he began to frequent the artistic gatherings of the Café Pombo where he met José Gutiérrez Solana. While he continued studying he made copies of great masters in the Prado Museum and various commissioned works. Two years later he took part in the II Provincial Exhibition of Fine Arts in the Assembly Hall of the Diputación de Alicante and his work. Just a month later his painting, "Portada Neoclásica", received the First Prize at the 20th edition of the Salón de Otoño held at the Retiro in Madrid, the most important award he had received up to then. In 1947 he was awarded two poster prizes in the competitions organised by the Directorate General of Insurance and Savings and the Madrid Easter Week Organising Committee, and in June of the same year he finished his studies at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts and continued his work as a landscape painter.