The open and multicultural spirit of his home city has had a permanent influence on José Hernández’s character. A self-taught artist who started his creative plastic career long before his architecture studies. Drawing is the basis of all of his work, so full of symbolism with his decomposing human figures and buildings in ruins. Counterpoint is always added by Nature – another constant feature in his work – breaking through like a ray of hope in a desolate environment.

With his personal imagery, Hernández invites us to reflect on the brevity of life and the passage of time. The spectator’s soul is filled with contradictory sensations in a voyage into his/her deepest self. Reality is broken up with entomological precision resulting in a world of deep surrealist roots where the influence of masters as great as Leonardo da Vinci, Durer or Goya is obvious.

José Hernández is much more than just a painter, draftsman or engraver. His artistic career has been enriched by numerous stage design projects for opera and theatre, as well as illustrations for literary texts by Rimbaud, Kafka or Sábato. Between pleasure and repulsion, the spectator will also notice the undeniable influence of Antoni Tàpies or Francis Bacon in the symphony of ochre and green tones that fill Hernández’s paintings with atmospheric values.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the most demanding critics consider Hernández a worthy successor to the great masters of the past while at the same time being an absolutely contemporary artist. His creativity is always seething, and from his studio Madrid he continues to propel a career that by now enjoys unanimous international recognition.