José Guerrero (Granada, 1914 - Barcelona, 1991) studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Granada and the San Fernando School of Fine Art in Madrid, where he studied with a grant, living in Velázquez's house. He held his first solo exhibition in 1946 (Galería Pereantón, Madrid), after two joint exhibitions with his friend Antonio Lago (in 1945 and 1946, at Macarrón, Madrid, and Galerie Altarriba, Paris, respectively). The French Centre Culturel gave him a grant to study the fresco technique in Paris. He then spent some years in Central Europe, exhibiting his work in Switzerland, Italy, France and England. In 1949 he went to the USA and the following year he moved to New York, where he made contact with some of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism (Kline, Rothko, Motherwell, etc.). Betty Parsons, one of the gallery owners who had done most to promote the New York school, took him on as one of her artists in 1954. He received a grant from the Graham Foundation to work jointly with architects on public spaces. From 1962 to 1965 he taught drawing at the New School for Social Researches in New York. He lived in Madrid for some years, where his work featured in the first individual exhibition at the Juana Mordó gallery, while his fields of colour were held up as an example by the young artists producing the new abstract art of the 1970s. He began his Fosforescencias (Phosphorescence) series, which, as even the severest international critics recognised, gave an energetic indication of various directions abstract art might take after the upheavals of Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, which was in its earliest stages. He received numerous accolades, including the Officer's Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica (1978), he was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government (1980), he received the Gold Medal of the City of Granada (1985) and the Andalusia Award for the Visual Arts (1988). In 1976 the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation devoted its first retrospective to his work and in 1980 the Ministry of Culture's Directorate-General for Fine Art organised an exemplary retrospective in the Arbós building. In 1990 the Government of Andalusia and Granada Provincial Council held another retrospective and in 1994, after his death, the Reina Sofía National Museum and Art Centre dedicated a retrospective to him. In 1999 Granada Provincial Council inaugurated the José Guerrero Centre in the building formerly occupied by the Patria newspaper,Retrato de Manuel opposite the Capilla Real.

AA.VV: Granada de fondo: colección de arte contemporáneo. Diputación de Granada, Granada, Granada Provincial Council, 2003 (catalogue)