José María Sicilia lives and works in Madrid, Paris and Sóller (Mallorca). After leaving school in 1980, he moved to Paris. If he began by working on paintings with an expressionist character and landscape themes, he later became interested in depicting everyday objects. In the mid-1980s, he moved temporarily to New York, where he purified his painting and oriented it towards material abstraction. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he began to work with the colour white on surfaces with very rich textures. He introduced the use of wax, which he combined with oils. Among other centres, he has exhibited at the IVAM, Centre del Carme in Valencia (1987), Palacio Velázquez in Madrid (1988), Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, Palma (1993), Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires (1997) and the Abadía de Santo Domingo de Silos in Burgos (2000). His work is present in collections at places such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía of Madrid, IVAM of Valencia, Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. In 1989, he received the National Plastic Arts Prize. E.B.