José Ortega

José Ortega was born in 1921 in Arroba de los Montes (Spain). His family moved to Madrid in 1934. In his early years, he was interested in art. At age 15, the Spanish civil war broke out and Ortega became a protest artist. He joined the Communist Party and was later sentenced to ten years in prison (1947). He was acquitted in 1952. Ortega later enrolled at the National School of Graphic Arts and at the free Club of Fine Arts in Madrid. In 1953, he received a French government scholarship to study at the School Estienne and the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He returned to Spain between 1954 and 1960, living in hiding. The artist later traveled to China and was awarded an art prize in Warsaw in 1955. In 1958, he founded the group "Popular Prints". Ortega went into exile in Paris between 1960 and 1970, and he was considered as one of the major Spanish artists of the new generation. His art (painting, printmaking, drawing) received numerous awards and the artist exhibited throughout France and abroad (Paris, St. Louis, Toronto, Philadelphia, Turin, Rome, Zurich, Essen, Luxembourg, Brussels). In 1972, Ortega presented a cycle of sixty etchings "Ortega + Dürer" at the Museum of Nuremberg in Germany. Late in his career, he worked on different series’ including Birth and Death of Innocents and Decalogue for Democracy. His work evolved from the 80s to a less schematic representation, tinged with metaphysics and steeped in mystery. José Ortega died in Paris, France in December, 1990.

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