José Comas Quesada (3 February 1928 – 14 January 1993) was a Canarian painter born in the Puerto de la Luz, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He is considered one of the greatest exponents of watercolour painting, both in the Canaries and Spain, of the last quarter of the 20th century.
Artistic beginnings
Comas started in the art of painting at the early age of 15. His interest in it already excelled in the subject of drawing of the old high school, spending many hours to practice with pencil and charcoal. In those difficult times of the post-Civil Spanish War, his family did not consider painting a profession with future, as he explained in an interview:
His interest in watercolour, pictorial technique which he would not leave and would become a vehicle of expression for the rest of his life, began when he was between 18 or 20 years, while he was looking at a watercolours by Francisco Bonnín Guerín in the "Gabinete Literario" of Gran Canaria's capital, saying about them:
Watching at the paintings by Bonnín, José Comas learned the technique of watercolour indirectly, but about the style he felt more identified with that of Antonio González:
Due to the economic situation of the 1940s he could not afford a teacher, although this was not an obstacle to learn by himself, taking his first steps in the techniques of pencil, wax, sanguine, oil and watercolour. He also practiced other artistic disciplines such as carving and sculpture modelling in clay, plaster or plaster cast, although his great hobby was always drawing.
During this first stage of his artistic career, he participated in several collective exhibitions, such as the Club PALA (1947) where he presented four small-format watercolours, as well as during the exposition of new painters on the occasion of the awards "Nicolas Massieu", in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He took part as well in the Biennial of Fine Arts of Las Palmas in 1950, 1952, 1958, 1960 and participated in the selection "Arti Grafiche Ricordi" (Milan, 1954).
After these first exhibitions he disappeared of the Canarian art scene for nearly twenty years because of family and work matters.
Establishment as a watercolorist
In 1974 he took up his true vocation, painting, and he became known in different art galleries of the moment. The unleashing that led to it was his work as representative of a company of moldings. At that time, the watercolourist felt like starting again and doubted on the artistic quality of these early pictures, hence he signed under the pseudonym of "Masca".
In 1975 he began exhibiting with the "Agrupación de Acuarelistas Canarios" (Canarian Watercolour Association), first in the art gallery Cairasco in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and one year later at the Fine Arts Society in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In 1976 he exhibited again in the above-mentioned Cairasco gallery, where he won the bronze medal of the Association for the watercolour entitled "Árboles y bruma" (Trees and mist).
Commemorative watercolours: "The painter of the city" Special mention deserve the collections created between 1977 and 1981, where he executed, among others, several successive series of watercolours whose leitmotiv was about the different spots of Vegueta and Triana neighborhoods and that coincided in time with the 500 anniversary of the founding of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
It was about evocative images of the old town, both contemporary to his time and retrospective of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which were expressed the spirit of the historic town; intimate, impeccable and secluded places, deserted passages and alleys, churches, traditional Canarian balconies or kiosks witnesses of another era and time.
Some of the paintings reflected the city as it was in the late seventies, but the spaces which had been transformed or disappeared victims of progress, the artist turned to recreate them to his own memories and photographs from his personal archive. He knew how to capture with great sensitivity the environment and the atmosphere of yesteryear, leaving a documentary record for future generations, as no other painter of the time devoted to immortalize and portray the city to commemorate such an important event in the Canary Islands history.
Until the arrival of Comas Quesada, except for certain paintings by Nicolas Massieu, Felo Monzón, Jorge Oramas and a few more authors, Las Palmas was a city without painters who portray her. And if Massieu is regarded as the painter of Gran Canaria, Comas Quesada is the painter of its capital city, because until then no other artist had produced so many works on it.