José Moreno Villa

José Moreno Villa (16 February 1887, Málaga – 25 April 1955, México) was a Spanish poet and member of the Generation of '27. He was a rich man who excelled in many ways: narrator, essayist, literary critic, artist, painter, columnist, researcher, archivist, librarian and archaeologist. He also taught at universities in United States and México.

After finishing high school in Málaga, when he was 17 years old, his parents sent him to Freiburg im Breisgau to study chemistry. There, while slowly studying chemistry, he increased his passion for reading without telling his parents.

He returned to Málaga in 1910 and decided to settle in Madrid. Through Jiménez Fraud does it charge translations. There he becomes familiar with personalities such as Ortega y Gasset, Enrique de Mesa, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Enrique Díez Canedo, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Pío Baroja, among others. He was employed by the editorial Calleja from 1916-1921, as recommended by Juan Ramón Jiménez. He wrote for magazines such as España magazine, Revista de Occidente and El Sol.

In Madrid, he lived at the Residencia de Estudiantes for nearly 20 years, during which he benefitted both intellectually and socially. With the emergence of the Spanish Republic, Moreno Villa lived during a time of general stability. He was appointed Director of the Archives of the National Palace and improved their economic situation. In 1927, he published a travel journal entitled Pruebas de Nueva York (Evidence of New York), inspired by his stay in the U.S. city with his girlfriend he met in Madrid.

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Valencia for a short time until he was exiled to the United States. There he performed various cultural and educational work at Princeton University. Shortly afterwards, he finally went into exile in Mexico, where he married, had a son and developed much of his work.

Poetry

• Garba (1913)
• El pasajero (1914)
• Luchas de Pena y Alegría y su transfiguración (1915)
• Evoluciones. Cuentos, Caprichos, Bestiario, Epitafios y Obras paralelas (1918)
• Colección. Poesías (1924)
• Jacinta la Pelirroja. Poema en poemas y dibujos (1929)
• Carambas (1931)
• Puentes que no acaban. Poemas (1933)
• Salón sin muros (1936)
• Puerta severa (1941)
• La noche del Verbo (1942)
• Voz en vuelo a su cuna (Avance de ese libro inédito) Ed. Ángel Caffarena Such (1961)
• Voz en vuelo a su cuna prologue León Felipe, epilog Juan Rejano (1961)
• Poesías completas Ed. Juan Pérez de Ayala (1998)
• La música que llevaba. Antología poética Ed. Juan Cano Ballesta (2010)

Other works

• Velázquez (1920)
• Patrañas (1921)
• Dibujos del Instituto Jovellanos (1926)
• Pruebas de Nueva York (1927)
• Locos, enanos, negros y niños palaciegos (1939)
• Cornucopia de México (1940)
• Doce manos mexicanas, datos para la historia literaria (1941)
• La escultura colonial mexicana (1941)
• Vida en claro, Autobiografía (1944)
• Leyendo a San Juan de la Cruz, Garcilaso, Fr. Luis de León, Bécquer, etc (1944)
• Probetería y locura (1945)
• Lo que sabía mi loro (1945)
• Lo mexicano en las artes plásticas (1948)
• Los autores como actores (1951)
• Análisis de los poemas de Picasso (1996)
• José Moreno Villa escribe artículos (1906-1937) ed. Carolina Galán Caballero (1999)
• Temas de arte ed. Humberto Huergo (2001)
• Ideografías de José Moreno Villa (2007)