Julio MOISES ✿

Julio Moisés Fernández de Villasante (Tortosa, 1888-Suances, 1968), was a Spanish painter and portraitist. He founded a Free Academy of Art in 1923. Director of the San Fernando School of Fine Arts (1942–1946). He worked above all on genre painting and female portraiture, a mixture of costumbrismo and folklore.

Born in Tortosa, Catalonia (Spain), in 1888. He spent his childhood between Galicia and Cádiz, the city where he began to study at the School of Fine Arts. There he won several awards and received commissions such as decorating his Gran Teatro.

In 1912 he moved to Barcelona and in his first participation in a National Exhibition of Fine Arts he obtained a third medal. He repeated with a second and a first award in the 1915 and 1920 editions. He was also awarded at the San Francisco (1915) and Panama (1916) International Expositions. His work would continue to be exhibited throughout his life, such as the various individual exhibitions that took him to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina in the 1930s.

Installed in Madrid since 1920, he taught for several years after founding in 1923 a Free Academy of Art. In 1927 he painted portraits for: Queen Maria Cristina, Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia. He was appointed director of the School of Fine Arts in 1946 and an academic at San Fernando in 1947. Some of his works are exhibited at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid and at the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona.