JOSE BARDASANO BAOS

He was born in Madrid in 1910 and studied in the college of Nuestra Senora de Maravillas, where he could develop his artistic inclinations from his childhood. When he was eleven, the painter Marcelino Santamaria saw him paint the nature in the Glorieta de Cuatro Caminos and he appreciated his talent that very moment, and so he decided to make him his favourite pupil. In 1922 he enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts where he learned a great deal from the mentioned Santamaria and during those years he received all the extraordinary prizes of his career.

Taking into consideration his abilities and inclination towards the painting, he took to the drawing, which was a formal undisputable framework. That is why he was collaborating in the magazines with illustrations since 1928. His favourite themes were a city of Madrid, its atmosphere, its people, in this case inspired by the descriptions of Benito Perez Galdos. Meanwhile he developed his water-colour techniques and learned the engraving. He was appointed director of the publishing agency Rex where he got to know concepts of illustrations and of designs that he would use in his posterior works.

In 1930 he won a trip to Andalusia at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. The year of 1934 is very important in his biography as he married the painter Juana Francisca Rubio, staged his first individual exhibition in "The Friends of Art" in Madrid and got the second prize in the National Exhibition with his wife's portrait. The following year he travelled to France, Belgium, Holland and England thanks to a scholarship granted by the Legado Conde de Cartagena and he had an opportunity to exhibit his works in such important cities as London and Paris. No doubt this experience is very important both on the level of apprenticeship: he got to know the Paris vanguard and he refused to adhere to it because of its frivolity and sophistication, and on the level of the popularization of his painted works.

In the spring of 1936 he came back to Spain and took part in the National exhibition of that year, but his canvas that was supposed to win the first prize was lost as the Civil War broke out. During these sad years he took an active part in the cultural life of the Republican government. He was distinguished and acknowledged as one of the best poster artists and he got the first prize for posters for the Official Department of Books. He was an active founder of the artistic group La Gallofa, which united the best artists of Madrid.

"I am not a poster artist that later turned into a painter. I am a painter who has made posters, which are two different things. Our Civil War was a time of indignation and injustice during which it was impossible to paint canvases, what we had to do was not a poster but thousands of posters". With these words Bardasano explained the necessity and the urgency of the art, inclining under those circumstances towards the public and political spheres. It is not unnecessary to repeat that he was able to use in practice in an incomparable way the concepts of design, communication and visual expression in hard times of the lack of other media.

In the time of the conflict after the concentration camp in France he was sent in exile to Mexico as many other artists were. In Mexico he mounted exhibitions since 1940 and in 1942 he dedicated his key paintings The Retreat and Evacuation to the Republican Spain, which was very important to him. During those years he took an active part in the cultural life of the whole Latin America and we should pay attention to his work as illustrator from 1959 for Femandez Editores S.A for the books The Song of Songs and The True History of the Conquest of the New Spain among others.