GINES PARRA

He spends his childhood in Algeria where he works as a miner just like his father. After several trips throughout South America and Argentina, in 1917 he starts to study art in the School of Fine Arts in New York, although he works part-time in the subway and as a waiter to earn his living. In 1920 he finds himself in Paris where he continues his studies in the National School of Fine Arts and gets to know some painters of the School of Paris, among whom Julio González and Picasso should be foregrounded. Following their example he starts taking part in various official exhibitions and organisations like the Society of French Artists, The Salon of Autumn and The Independent. He begins his career as an artist in a small studio of Montparnasse. In 1927 he stages an exhibition together with Joaquín Roca in the Gallery of Taureaux in Paris. Some time later one of his most successful paintings in the Salon of the Independent, Leda and the Swan, is perchased by a Gallery of Boston. In the thirties and forties his fame as one of the most successful painters of the School of Paris spreads wider, although very soon his economical problems urge him to sell a great part of his private  collection, where works of Degas, Picasso, and Modigliani are also found. He travells to Spain, stages exhibitions in different places like Brussels, Stockholm, Prague, London, Lima, Mexico, La Habana, Buenos Aires and so on and so forth. In the early sixties he makes exhibitions with Picasso in the Gallery of  Trouche and with Óscar Domínguez in Britain. After a serious disease he dies in Paris and in the same year the organization of the Salon of the Independent makes an anthological show in commemoration of the painter. Fourteen years later the first exhibition dedicated to the artist takes place in Madrid.