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Jose Ortega
Painter
Spain
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Born in Arroba de los Montes (Ciudad Real), 1921
Spontaneously self-taught
Also freely attended School of graphic Arts and other professional centers.
Ortega is a key figure, where social realism in Spain is concerned. His graduation as a fully-fledged painter coincided with his launching an intense campaign, which involved recruiting painters, who were ready to adopt a combatant, argument attitude in their medium.
In his own case, so truthful and sincere was his attitude that he frequently spent days living with workers or farm-laborers in an attempt to learn about their lives. While he was living in Spain, he was only known to have one passion greater than his keen interest in providing testimony of the working classes and servants of this country, and that was Spain.
His constant personal sallies into political adventure made it necessary for him to go into exile and he has been living in France since 1960. This has had a very decisive effect on his painting, because a person like Ortega, of whom it may be said that he can feel the pulse of reality, is extremely sensitive to all that surrounds him. He was the brain and the real founder behind the “Estampa Popular” groups.
Then, when he is not painting evocations of Spain, he engaged in a very synthetic kind of painting, employing figuration that was almost ideographic. His works had found a ready audience in Europe.
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