93 - JOSÉ LUIS FUENTETAJA (Madrid, 1951).

JOSÉ LUIS FUENTETAJA (Madrid, 1951). "Pesonajes". Mixed media on paper. Signed. Measurements: 24 x 24 cm; 52 x 52 cm (frame). José Luis Fuentetaja starts working in advertising at the age of thirteen, while attending the School of Arts and Crafts of Vallecas. A year later he travels to Geneva, where he comes into direct contact with painting and decides to devote himself to it exclusively. On his return to Spain he enrolled in Fine Arts, and in 1966 he visited Sitges for the first time, where he returned every year and later took up residence. In these years he began to sell his paintings at the Rastro in Madrid and later in Sitges, in the street. Also at this time he began his travels through Europe, painting views of Paris, London and Amsterdam. During these bohemian years he settled in Gran Canaria for five years. In 1969 he became friends with Sidney Nagley, who organized his first exhibition in Toronto (Canada). In Spain he made his debut in 1970 at the Ateneo de Barcelona, and shortly after the Count of Caralt commissioned him to illustrate a new edition of García Lorca's "Romancero gitano". During a stay in Madrid he won a scholarship to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome, although he had to give it up to do his military service. A few days before joining the army, he inaugurates an exhibition of his hyperrealist works at the "Quatre Gats" gallery in Palma de Mallorca. Since then, intense work and the struggle to improve day by day have marked the pattern of this painter's life. The search for styles and situations, the travels through Europe always attentive to the plastic novelties, have placed him in the pictorial line that he is currently developing. During the last twenty years he has alternated his work between his two workshops, in Sitges and Goa (India); the chromatic and luminous explosion of India and Nepal have defined his language since then. Throughout his career, Fuentetaja has shown his work both in Spain and in Milan, Geneva, New York, Sintra, Lisbon, Miami and Toronto.