José Guerrero was a key figure in Spanish abstract painting. He had close links with the international art scene of his time, particularly the early New York School of the 1950s, of which he was a member, and his work adopted the values of American abstract expressionism. Guerrero studied at the Granada School of Arts and Crafts (1931-1934) and later at the San Fernando Higher School of Fine Arts (1939-1944). Upon completing his studies in Spain, he travelled to Paris in 1945 with a grant from the French government to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. There he became acquainted with the historical avant-garde and the painters of the School of Paris, leading him to explore his own language, which was already fully aligned with the modernist movement. There followed a period of investigation which took the artist to Rome (1947-1948). There he met American journalist Roxane Whittier Pollock, and the two were married in 1949. The following year he moved to New York. It was to prove a decisive step in the development of Guerrero's own idiom, based on lyrical and gestural abstraction. He met gallery owner Betty Parsons, who introduced him to her circle of artists, including Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. He learned engraving techniques with Stanley William Hayter at the legendary Atelier 17. In 1954, Guerrero came to prominence with works that were characterised by a gradual process of abstraction and simplification of forms, based on the tension between chromatic masses and the expressiveness of the gestural component, which he developed further in the 1970s. During this period, he returned for a time to Spain, where he came into contact with the Cuenca group and was involved in the inauguration of the Abstract Museum. In 1966 he produced one of the most important works in his career,The Gap of Víznar, of which he produced several versions in the 1980s. In 1970 he began his series Phosphorescences, characterised by an abstract synthesis of the matchstick motif that allowed him to experiment with form and colour. Over the following decades he worked with the oval and the arc, which, as ideograms, become the borders between palpitating planes of colour.

From his first show at Betty Parsons' gallery in the 1950s, he exhibited widely. In Spain, from 1964 his work was largely shown and publicised by the Juana Mordó Gallery in Madrid. In 1976 his first anthological exhibition was held at the Salas del Banco de Granada and the Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta in Granada. This was followed by others at the Sala de las Alhajas (Madrid, 1980) and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1994). The José Guerrero Centre in Granada, opened in 2000, contains an important selection of the artist's works, together with his personal archive. He has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 1959, he was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government and in 1984 he received the Spanish Gold Medal for the Fine Arts.

Roberto Díaz