Ismael De La Serna

Born in Spain, Ismael González "de la" Serna studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Granada, Spain. Whilst at school González befriended the famous poet Federico Garcia Lorca, whose first book, Impresiones y Paisajes was illustrated by González. This friendship proved to be crucial in navigating the direction of his work.

After visiting the French Impressionists exhibition in Madrid in 1917, González became more focused on developing a ‘free’ artistic style. This exhibition founded his notions of color and line, and remained a consistent narrative throughout his oeuvre. In 1921 he moved to Paris, rarely returning to Spain. In Paris he was a member of the avant garde group, Spanish School of Paris. During this period he was influenced by the Cubist artists George Braque and fellow Spaniard, Pablo Picasso. It is claimed by the art critic Teriad, that Picasso declared “at last, a true painter! As grand as Juan Gris!”

González exhibited widely in the 1920s with much success. Paul Guillaume, a renowned Parisian art dealer of the Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, organized for an exhibition of fifty of his works. This lead to him exhibiting in the Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris in 1936, the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937, Later an individual exhibition at the Gallery Flechtheim in Berlin, which was sold out. In his later years the was a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Mexico in 1956, which was soon followed by another retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London in 1963.

In 1964 he became wheel chair bound after a long battle with cerebral palsy. From this point on, he very rarely ventured out of his home. After his death, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris held a retrospective exhibition in homage to this great artist.

Initially González experimented with neoclassic forms, later moving to a more Cubist style. Although a Cubist painter, González’s paintings were unique as they revealed an affection for color influenced by the French Impressionists such as Cézanne and Camille Pissarro.

In the 1950s he drifted away from commercial conventions to search for ‘the essence and the ultimate goal of painting.’ He reduced an image to its bare essence a mere outline in which form approached the postulate of Abstraction.