José Manuel Ciria is one of the most outstanding artists of his generation and a central figure in the heterogeneous panorama of Spanish painting of the last three decades. Since he held his first solo show in the Parisian gallery La Ferrière in 1984, Ciria has traced a long career marked by numerous exhibitions and awards. In recent years, his figure has acquired a wide international projection through his solo shows at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, Israel (2002), State Tretyakov Gallery Museum in Moscow, Russia (2004), National Museum of Poland, Warsaw (2004), Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art in Zacatecas, Mexico (2005), Kunsthalle Museo Centro de Arte PasquArt in Bern, Switzerland (2005), Ateneo de Yucatán Museum of Contemporary Art in Mérida, Mexico (2006) , National Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art of Santiago de Chile (2009), Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) (2010) among many other museum spaces.

 

After a first stage linked to an expressionist figuration, José Manuel Ciria stabilized at the beginning of the nineties the main abstract poetic key: the dialogue between the random flow of the stain and the rigor of the geometry, which will mean the critical redefinition of the two fundamental tools of the abstract aesthetics of the 20th century. To this first key will soon be added the artist's interest in the diversity of iconographic records as well as his indefatigable work of experimentation in the field of materials and supports. Starting from the combination of all the possibilities and supported by a solid conceptual reflection, José Manuel Ciria will elaborate throughout the nineties numerous series whose main thematic axes will be time and memory.

 

The new stage that Ciria began in New York at the end of 2005 was a turning point in his production, translated into a process of pictorial cooling from the recovery of the line as a compositional framework and the consequent stabilization of an ambiguous iconography. halfway between the figurative and the abstract. In his most recent works, the artist now recovers and intensifies the two extremes of his abstract vocabulary: the stain becomes freer, more intense and dramatic, while the geometry of the background accentuates its constructive rigor.

 

The influential North American critic, Donald Kuspit, has said of Ciria's work: «I will venture to affirm that José Manuel Ciria is a great painter, by which I mean that he has absolute control of his means of expression and his tools, painting and the modernist vocabulary of abstraction, both gestural and geometric (...). We clearly observe a strong element of fantasy in Ciria's paintings, as shown by his figures: let's call him an abstract illusionist?, that is, he creates fantastic figures starting from abstract elements, usually gestural planes that seem to be in constant movement, thus suggesting a figure in full metamorphic process.

 

José Manuel Ciria was born in Manchester on February 3, 1960, to Spanish parents (Santiago and Gloria), he remained in England until he was eight years old; moment in which his parents decide to return to Madrid. Ciria began to stand out from his childhood in his facility for drawing and painting, and after going through various schools and the workshops of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, at the age of 17 he entered the Faculty of Fine Arts in Madrid. In the second year of his career, Ciria decided to abandon his studies and to establish himself as an autodidact. In 1994 he obtained the Paris Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and in 1995 the Rome Scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2001, he was awarded a scholarship by the Israel Ministry of Culture and Science to prepare two exhibitions in Tel Aviv Museums.

 

Ciria's professional biography is also marked by numerous awards: XXIII Ciudad de Alcalá Award, Alcalá de Henares; Contemporary Plastic Vitoria-Gasteiz, Vitoria; III International Painting Competition, Barceló Foundation, Palma de Mallorca; XIII National Contest "Ciudad de Alcorcón", Madrid; V Cairo Biennial, (First Prize Gold Medal International Jury); First Biennial Exhibition of Art d'Alcoi; V Iberdrola-UEX National Painting Contest, Cáceres; National Prize for Painting IV Centennial Bar Association of Madrid; VI National Drawing Contest Gregorio Prieto Foundation, Valdepeñas; Autumn Hall of Painting Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts, La Coruña; XXIV Caja de Madrid National Contest; XIV National Painting Contest. City Council of Azuqueca de Henares, Guadalajara; II International Triennial of Graphic Art in Cairo, (First Prize International Jury); XXI Caja de Extremadura Autumn Painting Salon, Plasencia; LXVI Autumn Salon. Spanish Association of Painters and Sculptors, Madrid, (Extraordinary Award "Reina Sofía"); II Biennial of Plastic Arts Rafael Botí, Córdoba; LX National Exhibition of Plastic Arts of Valdepeñas, (First Prize - First Medal of the Exhibition); VI Mostra Union Fenosa, La Coruña; I Nicomedes García Gómez Foundation Painting Contest, Segovia; National Engraving Award Museum of Contemporary Spanish Engraving (MGEC), Marbella; Wallpaper Magazine (First International Prize for the best church decoration).