José Balmes
1927–2016 · Spanish-born Chilean painter of the Informalist generation
José Balmes (Montesquiu, 1927 - Santiago de Chile, 2016) was a painter born in Catalonia who became one of the leading figures in Chilean art. He arrived in Chile at the age of nine, aboard the Winnipeg, after the Spanish Civil War forced his republican family into exile.
He trained at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Chile, where his teachers included Pablo Burchard and Camilo Mori, and he obtained Chilean nationality in 1947. Together with Gracia Barrios and other artists, he formed the Informalist group Signo, which showed work in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. He taught at the University of Chile and, after the 1973 coup, went into exile in France, where he taught at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne until his return to Chile in 1986.
His career earned many awards, including Chile's National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1999 and the Altazor Prize in 2002. A committed communist and close to the government of Salvador Allende, he was also active in politics. He stopped painting in 2014. His legacy lies in the training of several generations of Chilean artists, among them Patricio Court, and in efforts to preserve his work together with Gracia Barrios.