José Balmes

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José Balmes Parramón (20 January 1927 – 28 August 2016) was a painter born in Spain who lived in Chile. He was born in Montesquiu, Catalonia. After the Spanish Civil War, his family fled to Chile on the SS Winnipeg, with help from the Chilean government. He finished school at Liceo Barros Borgoño and studied art at the University of Chile, where his teachers included Pablo Burchard and Camilo Mori. He became a Chilean citizen in 1947. In 1952 he married fellow artist Gracia Barrios, and they had a daughter, Concepción Balmes, who also became a painter.

Balmes taught at the University of Chile from 1950 to 1973 and was the dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1972–1973. He helped form the Groupo Signo, a loose group of artists, and his works were shown in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. He was a committed communist and was part of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. He supported Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government.

After the 1973 coup, Balmes went into exile in France and taught at Pantheon-Sorbonne University. He returned to Chile in 1986. He received Chile’s National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1999 and the Altazor Award in 2002. A 2012 documentary, Balmes: El doble exilio de la pintura, covers his life. José Balmes died in Santiago in 2016 from pneumonia.