RAMÓN GAYA
Murcia,(Spain) 1910 – Valencia, (Spain) 2005 

He began painting at a very early age in his native town, training in the studios of Pedro Flores and Luis Garay. His early work consisted of still-lifes and portraits, some of which were published in Verso y Prosa, a magazine to which he contributed –also as a writer- in 1927 and 1928. He then travelled to Paris with a grant provided by the Town Council of Murcia, and there he met the Spanish painters of the School of Paris and exhibited at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins. There he also began to move away from the dynamics of the avant-garde. When he returned to Spain in 1933 he settled in Madrid, where he continued his publications and joined the Republican project of the Teaching Missions, in which he was responsible for the Art Reproductions Travelling Museum. In the years prior to the Civil War he renewed his interest in Velázquez and the great artists at the Museo del Prado. Some of his paintings from this period were shown at the Ateneo in Alicante in 1935. During the Civil War he contributed regularly to the magazine Hora de España, and he was included in the Spanish Pavilion in Paris in 1937. After a brief period spent in a concentration camp in France he went to live in Mexico, where he renewed his acquaintance with Cernuda, Bergamín and Gil-Albert. It was there that he defined his range of themes, the dialogue with the classics, expressed by means of variations and glosses, mirrors and landscapes, while he continued contributing to magazines such as Taller. In 1952 he returned to Europe, living in Paris and Lisbon, and also in Rome, a city that inspired him to produce several series of paintings and literary texts and writings on art. He lived there from 1956 to 1974, after which he returned to Spain. He had previously exhibited at the Galería Mayer, in 1960, during his first visit to Spain after the war, and shortly after his return, in 1978, there was a selective exhibition at the Galería Multitud. Meanwhile, he continued painting small series of still-lifes, landscapes and tributes, continued with his activity as an illustrator for Pre-Textos publications, and also pursued his facet as a writer. In 1989 there was a retrospective of his work at the MEAC, and in 1990 the Museo Ramón Gaya was inaugurated in Murcia with a substantial collection of his work. Recently he was awarded the National Visual Arts Prize (1997), and his work was exhibited at the Galería Elvira González (1999) and the IVAM (2000).