José Moreno Villa (16 February 1887, Málaga – 25 April 1955,

México Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatem ...

) was a Spanish poet and member of the

Generation of '27 The Generation of '27 ( es, Generación del 27) was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. ...

. He was a man of many talents: narrator, essayist, literary critic, artist, painter, columnist, researcher, archivist, librarian and archaeologist. He also taught at universities in the United States and México.

Biography

Moreno Villa was born into a comfortable middle-class family in Málaga. His father, José Moreno Castañeda, was a conservative politician and his grandfather, Miguel Moreno Mazón, had been a conservative mayor of Málaga. After finishing high school when he was 17 years old, his parents sent him to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany to read chemistry. He didn't complete his studies. He returned to Málaga in 1910 and decided to settle in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

. There he became familiar with personalities such as

Ortega y Gasset Ortega is a Spanish surname. A baptismal record in 1570 records a ''de Ortega'' "from the village of Ortega". There were several villages of this name in Spain. The toponym derives from Latin ''urtica'', meaning "nettle". Some of the Ortega spel ...

, Enrique de Mesa,

Ramón Pérez de Ayala Ramón Pérez de Ayala y Fernández del Portal (9 August 1880, in Oviedo – 5 August 1962, in Madrid) was a Spanish writer. He was the Spanish ambassador to England in London (1931-1936) and voluntarily exiled himself to Argentina via Fr ...

, Enrique Díez Canedo,

Juan Ramón Jiménez Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (; 23 December 1881 – 29 May 1958) was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high ...

and

Pío Baroja Pío Baroja y Nessi (28 December 1872 – 30 October 1956) was a Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98. He was a member of an illustrious family. His brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his nephew ...

, among others. He was employed by the Editorial Calleja from 1916 to 1921, on the recommendation of

. He wrote for magazines such as ''España'', ''Revista de Occidente'' and '' El Sol''. He lived at the

Residencia de Estudiantes The Residencia de Estudiantes, literally the "Student Residence", is a centre of Spanish cultural life in Madrid. The Residence was founded to provide accommodation for students along the lines of classic colleges at Bologna, Salamanca, Cambridge ...

in Madrid for nearly 20 years, during which he benefitted both intellectually and socially. With the emergence of the

Spanish Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII, and was dissolved on 1 A ...

, Moreno Villa was appointed Director of the Archives of the National Palace. In 1927, he published a series of essays titled ''Pruebas de Nueva York (Observations of New York)'', inspired by his stay in New York City with his then fiancée, Florence Louchheim, whom he had met in Madrid at the Residencia. Florence became the protagonist of a book of poetry that Moreno Villa would also publish upon his return from the United States, called ''Jacinta la pelirroja (Jacinta the Redhead)''. With the outbreak of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, he moved to

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

for a short time until he was exiled to the United States, where he was employed in various cultural and educational posts at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. Shortly afterwards he moved to

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, where he married, had a son, and developed much of his work.

Works

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). Ed. by Humberto Huergo Cardoso. Barcelona: Anthropos, 2021. *''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, epilogue 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. Selección de escritos periodísticos sobre pintura, escultura, arquitectura y música (1916-1954)''. Ed. by Humberto Huergo Cardoso. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2001. *''Ideografías de José Moreno Villa'' (2007) *''Medio mundo y otro medio. Memorias escogidas''. Ed. by Humberto Huergo Cardoso. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2010. *''Función contra forma y otros escritos sobre arquitectura madrileña 1927-1935''. Ed. by Humberto Huergo Cardodo. Valencia: Iseebooks, 2010.

References

External links

Group José Moreno Villa fans on facebook
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moreno Villa, Jose 1887 births 1955 deaths People from Málaga Spanish essayists Spanish translators Literary critics of Spanish Spanish academics Mexican architectural historians Princeton University faculty Generation of '27 Spanish male poets 20th-century Spanish poets 20th-century translators Male essayists 20th-century essayists 20th-century Spanish male writers