EUSEBIO SEMPERE
Onil (Spain), 1924 – Onil (Spain) 1985
He spent his childhood in Onil, but in 1940 his family moved to Valencia, where he studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos. In 1948 he travelled to Paris, staying at the Spanish College, where he met Palazuelo and Chillida. The following year he presented his first solo exhibition at the Sala Mateu, twenty abstract gouaches that received bad reviews and were burnt by the artist when the exhibition ended. He then went back to Paris, where he remained until 1959. There he worked at the Galerie Denise René, making silkscreen prints, and he also met Arp and Vasarely. They and the work of Kandinsky and Mondrian influenced him when he began to develop a language based on abstract geometrical principles. Later he also formed friendships with kinetic artists such as Schöffer and Jesús Soto. Between 1953 and 1960 he produced numerous gouaches based on the juxtaposition of thin parallel lines, developing a formal system based on the circle, square and triangle. In 1954 he exhibited in Valencia at the Galería Braulio,belonging to the group of Seven, and the Club Universitario, where he presented his first luminous reliefs or “light boxes”, shown the following year at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, where he had already exhibited in 1950. 
In 1959, a year before his return to Spain, he exhibited at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona as part of the Grupo Parpalló, and in 1960 at the Ateneo in Madrid, his second solo exhibition, and he also took part in the Primera exposición de arte normativo español. In 1963 he received a grant from the Ford Foundation for a study-trip to the United States, where he met Josef Albers. In 1965 he exhibited very successfully at the Galería Juana Mordó, at a time of great activity, when he continued working with lines and light. In the late sixties Sempere participated in various collective initiatives connected with scientistic art, such as the Antes del Arte exhibitions and the exhibitions organised by the Computer Centre of Madrid University (1969). In his work this line existed alongside another more lyrical, more sensitive strand, which led him to take part in the Nueva Generación group and also alternate painting and sculpture. In 1974 he donated his collection to the city of Alicante. In the late seventies the first symptoms of an illness that gradually left him paralysed checked his activity. In 1980 there was a major selective exhibition of his work at the National Library, and in 1983, two years before his death, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Visual Arts Prize.