JOSÉ MORENO VILLA: BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

José Moreno Villa (1887-1955) was a Spanish poet and critic, who also stood out as a historian, columnist, painter and documentarian. In addition, he participated in the Generation of 27, and served as director of the Archive of the National Archive of Spain.

Moreno Villa's work was extensive, both in poetry and in painting. He has been considered one of the first representatives and promoters of the avant-garde movement, being an innovator within the Spanish poetry of the 20th century. Jacinta the redhead is, perhaps, his best collection of poems.

José Moreno Villa. Source: http://www.foroxerbar.com/viewtopic.php?t=11505, via Wikimedia Commons

His work was characterized by being cultured, sober, elegant and of a high intellectual level. In several of her writings, especially in the first ones, she expressed the concerns she had from the ideological point of view. Her literary creation was also loaded with symbolism, and had shades of surrealism.

Biography

Birth and family

José was born in the city of Malaga on February 16, 1887, into a family of high society that dedicated himself to the wine trade. His parents were José Moreno Castañeda, who was a politician and deputy, and Rosa Villa Corró. The poet had four brothers, he was the oldest.

Childhood and early studies

Moreno's childhood passed between his hometown and Churiana, a town where the family had the farm. Since he was a child he received a good education, he studied in the best schools. In 1897, at the age of ten, he was admitted to the Saint Stanislaus Institute of the Jesuits.

Moreno Villa always showed interest in studies, and got good grades. However, in high school he showed opposition to his teachers and the way of educating the Jesuits, so he had to complete his studies at the Official Institute of Malaga.

University education

Along with his school studies, he also studied painting, an art for which he had great talent. He graduated from high school with good grades, and then his father sent him to study chemistry in Germany, a career in which he felt no interest.

The four years that he spent in Germany, from 1904 to 1908, he devoted himself with vehemence to reading, and associated with people dedicated to letters and art. He decided to drop out of school and returned to Malaga, where he attended the literary meetings in the cafes and met writers like Emilio Prados.

In Malaga he worked as editor of the Gibralfaro, Litoral and Vida Gráfica magazines. In 1910 he went to Madrid to study art history at the Institución de Libre Enseñanza. He also frequented the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he made friends with the painters Benjamin Palencia and Alberto Sánchez.

Activities as a historian

José Moreno Villa's work as a historian was oriented to the investigation of the artistic and architectural heritage of Spain. In addition, from the pages of the newspaper El Sol, he wrote critical articles on art. He also translated from German: Fundamental Concepts in the History of Art.

A failed love

In the 1920s, José met Florence, a young woman from New York, at a friend's house with whom he fell madly in love. They began a romantic relationship, but after they traveled to the United States together to meet the girl's parents, disappointment fell on Moreno Villa.

The meeting with the in-laws was not pleasant, Florence's father did not agree that his daughter had a relationship with a man older than her. Dejected, the poet decided to return to Madrid, and it was to Florence that he dedicated the verses of Jacinta the redhead.

Exile and death

Before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, Moreno Villa was forced to leave the country, so he went to Mexico. In the Aztec country he resumed his life, both personal and professional. He wrote for El Nacional and Novedades, and continued to write and publish books.

The poet and painter found love again in the arms of Consuelo Nieto, widow of his friend Génaro Estrada, a Mexican politician. In 1938 they married, and two years later their only son, José Moreno Nieto, was born, which filled him with illusions and aroused fears because he felt old to be a father.

Moreno's experiences led him to write, in 1943, his autobiographical work Vida en Claro. The last years of his life passed between pencil and paper, between nostalgia and love.

Also, it is his old age, he immersed himself in the world of painting, a profession for which he felt a great affinity. He died on April 25, 1955 in Mexico, unable to return to his country.

Plays

The following shows, chronologically and by genre, the works of José Moreno Villa:

Poetry

- Garba (1913).

- The passenger (1914).

- Evolutions. Tales, whims, bestiary, epitaphs and parallel works (1918).

- Collection. Poems (1924).

- Jacinta the redhead. Poem in poems and drawings (1929).

- Carambas (1931).

- Bridges that do not end. Poems (1933).

- Hall without walls (1936).

- Severe door (1941).

- The night of the verb (1942).

Artistic criticism

Malaga Museum, where more than forty works by José Moreno Villa are preserved. Source: Tyk, via Wikimedia Commons

- Velasquez (1920).

- Drawings of the Jovellanos Institute (1926).

- The Mexican colonial sculpture (1941).

- The Mexican in the plastic arts (1948).

- Art themes. Selection of newspaper articles on painting, sculpture, architecture and music 1916-1954 (2001).

- Function against form and other writings on Madrilenian culture, 1927-1935 (2010).

Literary criticism

- Reading San Juan de la Cruz, Garcilaso, Fr. Luís de León, Bécquer, R. Darío, J. Ramón Jiménez, Jorge Guillén, García Lorca, A. Machado, Goya, Picasso (1944).

- Twelve Mexican hands, data for literary history. Chirosophy Essay (1941).

- The authors as actors. And other interests here and there (1951).

- Analysis of the poems of Picasso (1996).

Other works

- Bullshit. Tales (1921).

- The comedy of a shy man. Comedy in two acts (1924).

- New York Trials (1927). Diary of a trip.

- Crazy people, dwarfs, blacks and palace children: people of pleasure that the Austrians had in the Spanish court from 1563 to 1700 (1939).

- Cornucopia of Mexico. Essay (1940).

- Life in clear. Autobiography (1944).

- What my parrot knew. A children's folkloric collection assembled and illustrated by José Moreno Villa (1945).

- Half the world and another half. Selected memories (2010). It was a group of autobiographical articles and portraits published in Mexican newspapers from 1937 to 1955.

Articles

- Poverty and madness (1945). Newspaper articles.

- José Moreno Villa writes articles 1906-1937 (1999). A collection of articles with journalistic content.

References

1. José Moreno Villa. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
2. José Moreno Villa. (2010). (N / a): Artium. Recovered from: catalogo.artium.org.
3. Tamaro, E. (2004-2019). José Moreno Villa. (N / a): Biographies and Lives. Recovered from: biografiasyvidas.com.
4. José Moreno Villa. (2019). Cuba: Ecu Red. Recovered from: ecured.cu.
5. José Moreno Villa. (Sf). Spain: Andalusian Poets. Recovered from: poetasandaluces.com.