“At times it becomes necessary that some aspects of the identity of an artist be made clear or at least made public. As far as myself is concerned, I could say that my journey through the world of art and my need to profoundly express myself through its classical concepts and to make "the journey back wards", is conditional to the simple fact of being a self taught painter. I clearly see my need to return to the concept of the most serious academicism and with it the rigor, the analysis and the method, in order to later interpret the modern concept with the knowledge and the due respect to the forms. To sum it up, to go from the encounter with the truth to the search of that supposed truth. The synthesis after the analysis. Knowledge as the only formula to grow in this strange labyrinth that constitutes art.” Jose Manuel Gomez

Jose Manuel Gomez was born in a small rural town in the province of Cordoba, Spain in 1940. Raised in a family of veterinarians, he moved to the city of Cordoba at the age of 17 to pursue his personal interest in the arts. At the age of 19 he moved to Madrid, where he dedicated himself to playing the guitar in a band for 4 years and recorded 5 albums. Continuing his interest in music, he moved to Malaga, where he and some musician friends opened and managed a live music bar.

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Autobiography

It was back in the 1960’s and I was a student, one of those who did not seem to be able to conclude their studies. Thus, since I was a good musician, although just an amateur, but very good at playing the guitar, I took shelter in the alternative that seemed to offer me the most adequate way out of my situation. My reputation as a good guitar player very quickly allowed me to form a band. It was a trio that for a while, at least during three years, worked very well. We cut several records and we had good contracts, until the day that my sister married and she had been one of the members of the band. She took off to Peru with her husband and I was left alone with my guitar. And so I was back to where I had started out.

During those years the first winds of a certain freedom were beginning to be felt in Spain. The regime became more tolerant, thus obliged by the enormous number of tourists that arrived in the country from all over Europe and from the Americas of whom many where from the US. This was the time that the enormous promotion of the “Costa del Sol” Sun Coast started up and the names of Marbella and Torremolinos became household words all over the world. Especially Torremolinos at that time caught most of the interest of tourists for being, without doubt, the place where most of the fun and new freedom was felt during those days. The regime had opened its fist to allow this small village in Malaga to become the center of attention for the tourists coming from the rest of Europe and the States. It was a place filled with clubs and places with live music shows. One lived by night and to be frank it was a lot of fun and a very nice place to be. It was the ideal place for the start of my next adventure; and so I grabbed my guitar and off I went. I could never have imagined that this decision would radically change my life.

I started to work with my music and things were going well and after a little more than a year someone offered me a place to rent so I could start up my own club, which was called Manhattan. And there, together with other musician friends we started to turn into music promoters and businessmen.

And then one day in my club I met this French girl who seemed to take a great interest in me, we became friends and when her vacations came to an end she invited me to visit Paris. As you can imagine, for a young man of my age and time who had never left Spain, Paris seemed like a dream. It represented the paradigm of freedom and culture, the shelter for artists from all over the world and a place that held artists in high esteem, as first class social elements, helping them and protecting them. I was 24 years old at that time. I was full of unrealized dreams and I felt like an artist. I made a quick decision and once more I packed my guitar and went after a premonition, which would soon become reality. When I arrived in Paris, I immediately felt the magic effect that legends tend to produce when they become real. Everything seemed to me to be filled with culture and very impressive. Its history could be read in its well-kept monuments and its culture in its consideration and admiration for beauty and the arts. Even in the 1960s there was still a breath of bohemian atmosphere around and which impregnated everything and brought me close to the film “An American in Paris”. That is how I perceived this fantastic world. I felt privileged to be an artist and to be a part of that scene.

My second surprise came when I realized that my hostess in Paris belonged to a very powerful family. The head of the household was the famous cosmetologist Yves Rocher, who generously opened his home to me. This gesture immediately created a debt towards him, which I felt an obligation to repay as soon as possible in order to show my gratitude. I started out as I had planned to play in some places and so it went on for a while and I was doing fairly well. I got around quite well, although every time I liked the nightlife less and less and in time I even began to feel uncomfortable with it all, not for any special reason, but perhaps because I am more of a day person than a night person, I guess.

Jose Manuel Gomez, Galerie Bourlaouen, Nantes, France, 1968

I arrived at Paris in the month of October and when the celebrations of Christmas approached I thought that it was the moment for corresponding to so many attentions; but, my means were small so I decided to choose to offer something very personal, a drawing made by me. My facility to draw was immense. I had been drawing since I was a small child; it came as natural to me as talking. It was even to the point that I had never paid any attention to this quality of mine. I have always liked to draw very much, but for me, it was like a game and in addition as it did not cost me any effort I had rather thoughtlessly relegated it or to the plane of easy things. This is what I believed at that time. I then put myself to work with my pencil on a scene of a Siamese cat with her kitten that because of the contrasts made up a good working material for this kind of artwork and when Christmas arrived I presented it as a gift to Yves Rocher.

I will never forget the stupor on his face when he saw it. He looked at the drawing, then he looked over at me and asked: Have you done this? When I answered yes; he became thoughtful for a moment and then he looked at me and said: Forget about the guitar, do not lose any more time with it; you were   born to be a painter. I was astounded; when I heard him I just could not understand what he was saying; what was it to be a painter? The idea I had about painters, left me totally outside any identification with them, I had never thought about painting except as something beautiful and out of reach for me; and I had never had an ambition to become one. I had no artistic culture and drawing was to me simply a gift I had been born with and was as natural as walking. Thus, even today I am surprised by Yves Rocher´s insight. A high level businessman, totally separated from the world of art, had just discovered a painter who had yet to paint a single painting. A complete mystery.

I started out by drawing and studying drawing and its possibilities.
My natural gift helped me to quickly absorb any information. I signed up in art academies to learn the school of drawing and how to transfer reality and the natural world into drawings, and thus, little by little I started to feel a great love and respect for this work, and I left no stone unturned or effort aside. It became an obsession. The days and nights were not long enough. As if I was trying to recuperate the time lost I worked very hard trying to understand a little more each time of those things that at the same time seemed to become both easier and more difficult. The core of every artistic endeavor is based on the concept and how to develop it. “Find your inner self” - that phrase in art that encompasses the essence itself of the personality of an artist; that personality that allows an artist to sign his work without putting his signature to it; and which stamps that untransferable touch of the creative artist to his work. I asked myself if that would ever be my case, if it would happen to me. Working alone and with no one to guide me I racked my brain trying to find the relationship between the things I was doing and the inner motive which impulsed them, in order to get to know myself from another angle from that which I had previously seen myself. I began to feel the angst that the creative act gives rise to and where the only way out is to create. However, this creative engine of art would from then on be my constant companion, forever changing my personality, further reinforcing my need to become a painter.

Jose Manuel Gomez, Galerie Ives Jaubert, Paris, France, 1970

I had yet to paint a single painting, and I had never before done so, nor felt the need to, but suddenly the urge to paint came over me. After having seen so, but so many exhibitions, had created a sensation of understanding something, without knowing why or whether painting was something I myself could do. I felt very close to it, I understood it and I wanted to try and so I did. But I soon found out that this was a totally different world. Terribly difficult where my ideas were diluted and ran like the colors of the oils whenever I tried to paint something. It was an ungrateful job, it was dirty and difficult to handle. It was nothing like the ease I felt with the drawing and the cleanliness of drawing. I was starting to become desperate.

I decided to start painting with hardly any other purpose than that of applying colors and distributing the space as my aesthetic sense dictated, trying to understand how to search for the balance and the harmony and trying to avoid any voluntary proposal during this process. I let my instinct do the painting. I devoured all the exhibitions of modern masters that I was able to and tried to understand their techniques and their conceptualizations. Another great help were the never-ending conversations with friends who were painters and who fed me with ideas and criticized my work. During this period began the formation of the criteria that still guide me; and they also helped me to understand the art form we call “modern” and which I so much admire and always keep practicing. Then I received a proposal to make an exhibition in Madrid. I was still living in Paris and I was very much attracted by the idea of making an exhibition in my home country for the first time ever. And while the exhibition was still on, a friend of mine proposed that we visit the Prado Museum in Madrid. Of course I was very careful not to mention that it was my first visit ever there. It seemed to me something unconceivable to tell him that as a Spanish painter I had never been there. I will never forget that visit.

Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica, and Jose Manuel Gomez exhibiting at the National Museum of Costa Rica, 1987

It was the first time that I really saw paintings by the classic masters and I believe that I even felt physically ill by the emotional impact that I experienced during that visit. I felt like a pretentious insect calling myself a painter after seeing the Flemish masters, and Velázquez and Goya … My God, my world crumbled to pieces around me, I hated them for destroying the little force I had accumulated with so much effort. But they affected me with a deep attraction, which obsessed to such a degree that one day I proposed to do a first timid and tentative try; and I remember that I painted a person on a small piece of board and, which, surprisingly enough, did not cause me to feel sick as I had thought it would. I digested it. I studied it. I began to understand some things and I tried again, and so again, over and over and over and over again...Every time I discovered something new until I learned to think as they had done – a new way of thinking for me.

This new way of thinking and painting, which as the self taught painter I was, became a whole new challenge since it implied all the academic concepts that I had never had and slowly they took hold of me until forming my personality as a painter. But I always kept my modern concepts with which I frequently experimented and to which I owe so much. All this process took place while I still lived in France, which were really my formative years, because I only consider myself a professional painter from the time when I went back to Spain, where I met the person who today is my wife and the mother of my children. Thus, from 1973 onwards I had to face up to the hard reality of making a living out of painting. I had come home. At that time those other components that make an artist arrived – character and faith. Without those ingredients, skill is worth nothing. But painting took good care of me and my beloved. I cannot complain. My dream like paintings in which I tell my fantastic stories and in which many art critics see the influence of Hieronymous Bosch, gave me a lot of prestige and constituted my main line of work for a long period.

Then came my works on the Spanish horse, which have made me so well known and which I so much love to do since I have always loved horses, ever since I was a child. I am sure that all these eclectic experiences have had a great influence on me, turning me into a versatile painter and to take into consideration all disciplines and concepts – all under one roof, so to say, that same roof that protects the art of painting.

Angel Peralta in the artist's studio, 2006	The artist visits Angel Peralta and brother at their estate "El Rocio" in Sevilla, 2006	Jose Manuel Gomez is named Favorite son of Fuente Obejuna, 2003
Mario Vargas Llosa in the artist's studio, 2001	Roundabout of Santos Rein is named after the artist -interview, 2000	The artist riding, Mijas Costa, 1987

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