Although born in Leon, at the age of nineteen the painter moved to Madrid to enrol at the School of Fine Arts. In the 1980s he was one of the painters working at La Nave, the

 Bateau-Lavoir 

the name of a building in Paris which was the residence and meeting place for many artists in the early 1900s. By extension, the name is often used as a place where painters and artists work and gather.

located in calle Santa Úrsulain Madrid that provided a working space for many artists.

José de León defined himself as a “national surrealist” painter, and is considered one of the possible heirs to the movement created by Breton, to which we ought to add his passion for Spain and its symbols. He is a visionary and imaginative painter whose works seem to be suffused with a fairytale atmosphere of fantasy.

A noteworthy feature of a period (1990-93) in the work of this artist is the dominant presence of white, an aspect clearly visible in the exhibition Sueños de cal. Over a white backdrop that seems to be longing for Southern landscapes and Mediterranean light, the artist applies a palette made of bright rainbow colours.

In Referencias oníricas. Sueño blanco IV, José de León conjures up a world of dreams, with the white background resembling a rundown wall covered with stains and graffiti. Against the trace of smoke from old fires, the space is taken over by a number of elements—coloured stones, flowers, chalices—that project their shadows onto the scratched wall, criss-crossed by forms reminiscent of nets. Inevitably, our eyes focus on that black rectangle with a circular mirror in its centre, a nocturnal landscape opening up in the dream towards the unknown.