Ramón Gaya
Ramón Gaya was born in Murcia in 1910, the son of Salvador Gaya, lithographer, and Josefa Pomés. His parents, Catalan, moved to Murcia because Salvador is going to participate in the installation of a lithograph. His beginnings in painting go hand in hand with the painters Pedro Flores and Luis Garay, friends of his father; He left school almost a child to dedicate himself to painting, completing his training in the small library of his father, a cultured Catalan worker, anarchist and Wagnerian. Tolstoi, Nietzsche, Galdós, will be among his first readings, authors who will accompany him throughout his life. Thanks to a scholarship granted by the Murcia City Council, at the age of seventeen he goes to Madrid, visits the Prado Museum and meets Juan Ramón Jiménez and almost the entire Generation of 27; shortly after, he went to Paris with Pedro Flores and Luis Garay, with whom he exhibited at the Aux Quatre Chemins gallery. Despite the success of the exhibition and the attractiveness of life in Paris, he was disappointed in avant-garde painting and after a few months he decided to return. In August 1928 his mother died in Murcia. In October he went to Altea, where he spent several months painting and his rejection of the avant-garde made a crisis.
The proclamation of the Second Republic surprises him in Barcelona, where he has gone to visit his father. In January 1932 he was in Madrid, he collaborated with the Pedagogical Missions, made several copies of paintings from the Prado Museum for the Museo del Pueblo, and later traveled with this project to the towns of Spain. In June 1936, he married Fe Sanz in Madrid. Declared war, it is part of the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals. In Valencia, in 1937, his only daughter was born. He participates in the founding of the magazine Hora de España, of which he is a member of its editorial board, and of which he will be the sole cartoonist. In 1939, in the last days of the war, his wife died in the bombing of Figueras, which was survived by his daughter. With the army he crossed the Pyrenees and spent sixteen days in the Saint-Cyprien concentration camp. His father dies in Barcelona. Together with the group from Hora de España, in June 1939, he embarked on the Sinaiacamino de México, where he would remain in exile until 1952. These were years of loneliness and intense work. The Tributes to the Great Painters appear as the subject of his paintings, as well as beautiful and highly personal landscapes of Chapultepec and Cuernavaca. He collaborates with his writings in some Mexican magazines such as Taller, El Hijo Prodigo, etc. He reunited with Octavio Paz, whom he had met in Valencia during the war, he frequented the poet Xavier Villaurrutia, the musician Salvador Moreno, Octavio Barreda, Laurette Séjourné and the poet Tomás Segovia
again and back to Mexico. (In 1984, the Pre-Textos de Valencia publishing house published his book: Diario de un pintor, 1952-1953, in which the annotations for that year are collected). In 1956 he returned to Europe and temporarily settled in Rome; he meets again with the Great Museums, with the great painting: Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne. His great friend María Zambrano lives in Rome; Thanks to her, he meets Elena Croce, Tomaso Carini, and together with them he will visit Italo Calvino, Carmelo Pastor, Nicola Chiaromonte, Pietro Citati, Cristina Campo, Elémire Zolla... The great themes of painting appear in his paintings: Baptism, Burial of Christ, Noli me tangere, Judith and Holofernes etc. In De Luca, Editore, Roma 1960, his book Il sentimento della pittura appears. On March 4, 1960, he came to Spain after twenty-one years of exile. In Madrid he visits the Prado, where he sees the Velázquez again. Some friends have organized an exhibition for him at the Mayerde Madrid gallery. The publishing house Arión publishes his book The feeling of painting. He meets old friends: Bergamín, Leopoldo Panero, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Bonafé.
again and back to Mexico. (In 1984, the Pre-Textos de Valencia publishing house published his book: Diario de un pintor, 1952-1953, in which the annotations for that year are collected). In 1956 he returned to Europe and temporarily settled in Rome; he meets again with the Great Museums, with the great painting: Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne. His great friend María Zambrano lives in Rome; Thanks to her, he meets Elena Croce, Tomaso Carini, and together with them he will visit Italo Calvino, Carmelo Pastor, Nicola Chiaromonte, Pietro Citati, Cristina Campo, Elémire Zolla... The great themes of painting appear in his paintings: Baptism, Burial of Christ, Noli me tangere, Judith and Holofernes etc. In De Luca, Editore, Roma 1960, his book Il sentimento della pittura appears. On March 4, 1960, he came to Spain after twenty-one years of exile. In Madrid he visits the Prado, where he sees the Velázquez again. Some friends have organized an exhibition for him at the Mayerde Madrid gallery. The publishing house Arión publishes his book The feeling of painting. He meets old friends: Bergamín, Leopoldo Panero, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Bonafé.
