José Peris Aragó

JOSÉ PERIS ARAGÓ (Alboraya, Valencia, 1907–2003).
“Portrait.”
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Shows loss of polychromy in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 88 x 69 cm, 104 x 85 cm (frame).
Poster artist and painter. He studied art at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, where he won several academic awards. He participated in various group exhibitions at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the Sala Blava d’Acció d'Art. At the age of twenty-five, he held his first solo exhibition at the Ateneo Mercantil in Valencia, which was very well received by critics and the public. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the group of visual artists at the San Gregorio convent in the Ruzafa neighborhood of Valencia, and, when his draft class was mobilized, he was assigned to Section II of Instruction and Mobilization in Albaida (Valencia), where he collaborated with the propaganda commissioner. He also created posters commissioned by the Republican Left party, in which he encouraged the defense of Madrid on the home front and on the Eastern Fronts. After the war ended, he worked at various advertising agencies and created more than five hundred movie posters for the Valencian film company C.I.F.E.S.A.
Around 1950, he began to devote himself fully to painting, his true calling, where he has demonstrated a style characterized by rigor and seriousness, straddling the line between Impressionism and Realism.
In 1993, the Board of Directors of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Valencia awarded him the Gold Medal for Artistic Merit in recognition of a lifetime dedicated to art.