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Introduction
“…
I’ve painted on anything and with anything, even with shoe polish.”
(Diario
La Verdad. 23-IX-1990)
José
María Párraga Luna (Alumbres, 1937 - Murcia, 1997) was
an exceptional and unique artist who created a really extensive, surprising,
and personal artwork during more than forty years. Some estimate that
the figures of his production go up to more than tens of thousands
of works, and surprisingly, this may not be far from the truth.
He studied
to become an artist in the School of Arts and Crafts of Murcia, where
he attended courses conducted by Luis Garay, Mariano Ballester, Nuria
Sureda... He was also a regular visitor of some artistic ateliers
in the city, where he would share experiences with an exceptional
generation of artists.
The broad
formation he acquired during those years allowed him to work on any
project which would emerge from his endless creative mind with impressive
ease and confidence from a young age.
His drawings,
collages and pyrographies are very well known. His important work
as a muralist was frequently, although superficially, referred in
various of the sources we have consulted. However, this was, in our
opinion, an aspect of his career that deserved an exhaustive investigation.
The results
of this process of investigation and cataloging of murals has been
published, almost in real-time, in the web page we have been developing
since March 2017: www.pintorparraga.com. With them, we have made a
documentary which is shown here as well.
At the
same time, we have found a large number of works in several private
collections, mostly unpublished, where he used the most diverse formats,
techniques, and procedures. Párraga’s complete formation
and curiosity about any kind of material, however ephemeral or unusual
it was, have been proved in this (necessarily incomplete) selection
which is exhibited here.
After the
exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts of Murcia, «El Extraño
Pintor» («The Odd Painter») is transferred to the
MURAM (Regional Museum of Modern Arts) of Cartagena, enhanced with
new pieces of major interest.
Antonio
Hernández Valcárcel
Fernando
Ureña Villanueva
Curators