Juan Ismael

Juan Ismael, the artistic name of Ismael Ernesto González Mora, was a painter, poet and avant-garde creator born in La Oliva, Fuerteventura. The Academia Canaria de la Lengua places his life between 1907 and 1981 and presents him as a major figure in the Canarian artistic avant-garde of the 1930s, especially in relation to Surrealism.

He spent his childhood and youth in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he began his artistic training at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios. In 1927 he moved to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, worked in Teodoro Maisch's photographic laboratory and came into contact with the Escuela Luján Pérez. Around 1930 he returned to Tenerife and helped found the magazine Cartones.

From 1931 he lived in Madrid, joined avant-garde circles and took part in the 1936 Exposició Logicofovista in Barcelona. After the Civil War he was convicted in 1944 by a Francoist court, although the sentence was commuted to exile within the Canary Islands. From 1945 he resumed his intellectual activity: he published El aire que me ciñe, co-founded PIC in 1947 and LADAC in 1950, emigrated to Venezuela in 1956 and returned to the Canary Islands in 1966, where he also taught.