José María Mezquita

JOSÉ MARÍA MEZQUITA GULLÓN (Zamora, 1946).
"Gypsy".
Oil on canvas.
Damaged in the central area and missing in the frame.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 42 x 35 cm; 62 x 55 cm (frame).
Zamora painter, the essentiality of his painting, is a figurative painting that starts from motifs found in his native Zamora and in the Castilian landscape and that reaches a high degree of universality within a poetics of concentration and silence. He is an essential painter and a key piece of the Spanish figuration, his work focuses on the closest reality, his city, his stores, the landscape, the trees, the solitary oaks, which he captures through his condition of extraordinary draftsman and engraver. Being such a figurative painter and focused on reality, many times his work ends up being unreal. Between 1964 and 1965 he studied at the Academia Peña and Círculo de Bellas Artes, and in the latter year he went on to study Fine Arts at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, where he was a disciple of Antonio López for five years and a fellow disciple of the 'everyday realists' of Madrid.
Among his numerous individual exhibitions are those carried out in: Caja de Ahorros de Zamora, Seiquer Gallery (Madrid), Fúcares Gallery (Almagro), Jorge Kreisler Gallery (Madrid), Casa del Cordón (Burgos), Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Leandro Navarro Gallery (Madrid), Logroño Cultural Center; Sala de Armas, Pamplona Citadel, Retrospective of the Junta de Castilla y León...etc. His works have also been exhibited in Moscow and Leningrad, and are part of important public and private collections: Infanta Cristina Collection, Bank of Spain, Juan March Foundation, Coca Cola Foundation...etc. In 2006, he was awarded the Castilla y León Prize for the Arts.