José Manuel Broto Gimeno was born in Zaragoza in 1949. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in his hometown and in 1972 he moved to Barcelona.
Along with Javier Rubio, Xavier Grau and Gonzalo Tena forms the Trama group and in 1976 participate in the exhibition "Per una crítica de la pintura" at the renowned Galería Maeght, having Antoni Tàpies' support. Since its establishment, the group will work moreover the field of abstraction versus the artistic conceptualism of the moment.
This group of artists also published a magazine which they called, likewise, Trama, but only managed to bring out a couple of numbers.
While Broto's early works were of a constructivist nature, since 1972 the artist evolves to the simplest informalism, and produces works based on elemental geometric figures on plane colored backgrounds.
In 1985 he moves to Paris and during this stay of almost a decade, he meets other Spanish artists such as Miquel Barceló, Miguel Ángel Campano or José María Sicilia.
In the early 80s his creations are made on large canvases and the artist is focused in color and its expressive qualities. Broto combines the abstract forms with references to geometric objects or signs taken from other languages such as mathematics, music or writing. During these last years his work has been simplified in terms of materials and his informalism is based on the color, as a way to express and excite, and the gesture, the result of a poetic and metaphysical thought.
Among the many solo shows he's had stands out the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía's retrospective (Madrid, 1996) and the traveling exhibition "Broto. Rever", organized by the General Directorate of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain (Chile, Mexico and Montevideo, 2004).
His work has been recognized with the Grand Prize of the Salon de Montrouge (France, 1988), the National Prize of Plastic Arts of Spain (1995), the ARCO Award Critics (1997) and Goya Award Recorded Aragon 2003.
Broto's work is present in major museums around the world such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the IVAM in Valencia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the FRAC (Fond Régional D'Art Contemporain) in Midi -Pyrenees, France and Atheneum Museum in Helsinki, Finland, among others.
