In Memory of Helios Gómez

The voice of a town crier makes it known that on the 27th of October 1905 Helios Gómez was born in Seville, Spain, the son of an anarchist worker in the cork sector. At 13 he starts to work at the «La Cartuja» pottery factory , where his career as painter-decorator starts. At this time he joins the anarchist-inspired trade union CNT. His gift as a draughtsman leads him to seek a more academic training and he attends evening courses at Seville’s «Escuela de Arte del Museo». His first published work appears on the front page of the anarchist newspaper «Páginas libres». He later made his first exhibition in 1925 at the Kursaal Café of Seville. In this same year Gómez paints a portrait of a lady with red pencil, the «Lady in Sienna» of the title of this piece. He did a sketch of the portrait first, in which he sought to visualise the final result, and he gradually gained in confidence, as he finally understands how the drawing should be created. This is the moment when his lines become more resolved. This musical passage is the core theme of the piece. He tries to depict the intense love that Gómez the painter feels for his model. In the coming years he would develop as an artist and travel and exhibit work in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Brussels and Berlin.
In 1930 he moves to Barcelona and evolves from anarchism to communism. He works as an illustrator for «Mundo Obrero» and other progressive publications, and he becomes more of a convinced communist as time wears on. In 1933 he travels to Moscow and takes part in an exhibition of revolutionary Western art. In 1936 he founds the SDP, the Professional Draughtsmen’s Union, which he presides. Helios Gómez’s life is a novel well worth knowing. This piece just seeks to be a brief sketch of his younger years and above all the story of a painting featuring a woman I fell in love with as a boy, wich I went to look at every time I visited my grandmother's house. My mother subsequently inherited the portrait. Being that she was fully aware of my feelings, she gave it to me as a present.