20 años sin José María Párraga

EL EXTRAÑO PINTOR

 

........................................................................................................................

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At the same time, we have found a large number of works in several private collections, mostly unpublished, where he used the most diverse formats, techniques, and procedures.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

......................................................................................