ABOUT

José Mosquera

José Mosquera (Madrid, 1954) is a Spanish painter who has exposed in Spain and the United States.


…Painter of pale sunrises, ignited twilights and resplendent nocturnals, José Mosquera not only is a landscape artist, but also a creator of compositions of intense expressiveness. […] José Mosquera’s work, painted with a wise mastery of light and chromatic values, befits someone who has great mastery and is aware that the tenuous border between figurative and abstraction actually does not exist. […] José Mosquera’s work can be linked to artists of the past such as Claudio de Lorena, William Turner, Arnold Böcklin or James Abot Whistler, as well as to artists more close to contemporary art like the photographer Alfred Stieglitz or the abstract painter Mark Rothko…»

Antonio Bonet Correa (Director of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in «El territorio de lo sublime y la pintura neometafísica de José Mosquera» (2005)


I perceive a certain complexity in José Mosquera’s painting which is difficult to appreciate from an initial, superficial glance. This can only be explained if you know José Mosquera in person and you have been lucky enough for him to confide some of his problems, specially if these relate to his work. José, the son of a painter, who grew up among canvasses and paintbrushes, represents one of the most important and highly respected cases of professional continuity I have come across. He took on this responsibility after years of doubt and unease. For him, the decision to paint was so serious that he only resolved this when he understood that for many people reality was what one could live, while for him reality was only what could be painted. Establishing himself indisputably as a painter meant a stormy inner struggle. His reserved nature must have battled against strong inner feelings. In him, it is tranquillity that shapes and guides all life-giving impulses. Many of his pictures appear to me like a permanent dawning which fears breaking into a day, cautious of what its future evolution could entail. Like the fist light of morning promising yet threatening. His canvasses are inhabited by tremblings, tremors, transitions and uncertain movement. From his themes, he always seeks a moment, which he makes us see calmly but, at the same time, we perceive that a prior acceptance has taken place in him so that the moment becomes changeable and very different. What is depicted almost always hints at its forthcoming evolution, and is revealed before, hoping that we will be able to see clarity in confusion, energy in what is nice, delicacy in what is rugged. A patient analysis of the quality of light and the elements of color allows us to define the complexity of all that is variable, of what never remains the same. Through his highly pictorial treatment of the medium, he achieves the emergence of the culminating points of the theme from ample areas of silent vibrations, which become thus, beautiful referential details. To a certain extent, he disregards the form of things, and his search for atmospheric changes: he loses sight of the line that demarcates them and their defining tone. However, the strong initial structure of this works remains, enclosing spaces of different meaning, and we can say that the form is still present, of course, but that it flees and hides, it seems to float before us in that vapor which is full of life.»

Julio López Hernández (Spanish artist) in the book «José Mosquera» (1997)


Living together has to do with time and events: light, technique, tradition and the present; as well as certainty and insecurity: insecurity in what is sure, certainty of the doubtful. These paradoxical experiences constitute one of the facets of the pictorial rarity of José Mosquera, the heart of this continuous research; at the way he wonders to external reality and at his own coexistence of reality, trying to reach from the conjunction of both, and image, a word that will bring them together. Another facet of this rarity stems from the balance between tradition and the present. In both features his style of painting could seem unusual because it is sensitive. In both aspects, reality vibrates intensively, immediately melts in the seer color that gives body and supports his painting.»

Adolfo Castaño (Member of the international Association of Art Critics) in «José Mosquera: Absolute Vision Chicago» (1996)