From Guadalajara to the world: the creative drift of José Parra

José Parra was born in Guadalajara in 1975 into a family where painting was a part of their heritage: his father and grandfather cultivated the Mexican Baroque tradition. At 16, he joined his father's studio and later studied Fine Arts at the University of Guadalajara. He continued his training at the Art Students' League in New York and became familiar with the academic world with teachings in the studio of painter Carlos Vargas Pons.

Career and recognition

His work has been included in publications in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, and exhibited both domestically and internationally, in cities such as New York, Asheville, San Miguel de Allende, Montreal, and several European capitals. He has organized and participated in figurative art events such as the "Mexican Lottery, International Meeting of Figurative Art" and "El Juguete," presented in museums and galleries in various Mexican cities. His work is included in collections such as the Black Coffee Foundation, the Milenio Group, the Centennial Museum in Monterrey, the Government Palace of Jalisco, the Riley Collection in Arizona, and even the King Felipe VI Collection of Spain, the latter with the piece "El Músico," an oil on canvas.

Parra's aesthetic draws on the Baroque (with its drama and theatricality), but also draws on magical realism, through influences such as Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Anne Bachelier, and the visual philosophy of Frederick Hart.

Chronicles of the Drift: An Emblematic Exhibition

With Chronicles of Drift, presented at Manifesto Gallery from July 22 to August 22, 2025, José Parra reaffirmed his compositional mastery and his ability to transform the intimate into a universal allegory. Voluptuous, theatrical, and meditative paintings unfolded like a visual calendar in which each frame was a chapter and each character, a mirror of the human condition. In this transition, the viewer was lost in their own time and, at the same time, found themselves in the present moment.

Manifesto's director, Katerine Bergengruen, explained it with a very clear and revealing phrase: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there"—a quote from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland—also citing that surrendering to the unexpected isn't abandonment, but rather a leap of faith sustained by intuition and discipline. This same surrender is the core of Parra's work: abandoning oneself to find oneself in painting, while continuing to build, step by step, one's own path.

A legacy under construction

Today, José Parra occupies a unique position in contemporary Mexican art: he is a creator who articulates the baroque, the intimate, and the narrative in a unique visual language. His work not only seduces with its sensorial intensity; it questions, invites the viewer to self-discovery, and reaffirms the power of uncertainty as a generative space. In his painting, losing one's way isn't going astray: it's finding the pulse with which humanity beats.

Today, his work is part of the collective exhibition The Art of Wine, which is on display at the Mexico City Museum.

His work on IG @estudiojoseparra