Josè Ortega (1921-1990) - Contro Franco

José García Ortega (Arroba de los Montes, 1921 – Paris, 24 December 1990) was a Spanish painter and sculptor. He was a representative of social realism of the Spanish Civil War and one of the members of the group "Estampa popular", of which he was also a founder. At thirteen he moved to Madrid where he began creating his first paintings and took part in anti-Franco circles, thus linking his later experiences and his work to a strong political and civic commitment. At 26 he was convicted of crimes of opinion, and after prison in 1952 his first cycle of wood engravings appeared. In the early sixties his long exile began and he moved to Paris, where he was awarded, by the International Congress of Art Critics of Verucchio led by Giulio Carlo Argan, the gold medal for his action in the fight for freedom. In 1964 Antonello Trombadori organized his first solo show in Italy at the La Nuova Pesa gallery in Rome, followed by those in 1968 and 1974. In the following years he held numerous exhibitions in Philadelphia, Toronto, Saint Louis, Zurich, Turin and Brussels. In 1969 he produced the twenty engravings of the great suite The Reapers, inspired by the suffering of the farm workers. In 1971 he worked on the Ortega±Dürer cycle, sixty engravings concerning the theme of the Spanish Civil War presented at the Nuremberg Museum and later exhibited at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.