My favorite artist

 Jose Balmes

                                                               

                                                                                                  Granadas, 1993. Oleo sobre tela, 187,5 x 167 cm.

    My favorite artist is Jose Balmes, I did not know whether to write about him or about Gracia Barrios since I like them both very much, in the end I decided on Jose Balmes painter of metaphorical realism.

This work is one of my favorites, I really love it. Her name is ¨Granadas¨ This photograph is taken from my book of Chilean painters ¨Naturaleza Muerta¨ Chilean Artists 2002. This oil painting was created in 1993, the main characteristics of her art is defined by the researcher and critic Gaspar Galas:

"(Balmes) subverts shapes and colors, informalizes them; experiment with dirt and sand, challenge the limits of the picture. But, likewise, he does not stray from the world. The urgency of the social is more than an obsession. It is his awareness that art influences and should help change the world. "

I love everything he does in his works, he is expressive, he leaves the rules, his works are vibrant,

They remember the visceral and subtle aspects of life.

In Chile, the first questions about the vitality of the genre began around 1960, with the appearance of the Signo group (José Balmes, Gracia Barrios, Alberto Pérez, Eduardo Martínez Bonati); and, although from that moment the question about the state of painting became more acute, during the following decades and up to the present, the questioning of that language has not stopped.

The Signo group, above all José Balmes, proposes as a first step the elimination of the representation of the world as a system and supplanting it by a direct action, with the most diverse, complex and difficult to understand signifiers at the time, constituting a work.

For me they are special since the socio-political problems and the warlike conflicts of the second half of the 20th century also took their fabrics, and they have been spokespersons and narrators of a universal contingency, accentuating their denunciation from the coup d'état of 1973 in Chile, which produced a break-country in all respects and that among other stagnation and setbacks, stopped the reform of teaching and development of contemporary art.

Jose Balmes and grace Barrios as I mentioned at the beginning I love them, they are my favorite artists. They studied at the University of Chile, are a couple (marriage) and companions.

                 Moore Information about this artist

                 Interview with Jose Balmes