A practitioner of a contemporary version of the traditional Luminist school from Valencia, Hernández Mompó’s first steps as an artist were defined by his creation of urban scenes and figurative landscapes essentialised and diluted on series on paper. The outcome is a personal, immediate and, to some extent, naive world.

After studying at the School of Fine Arts of Valencia, the artist travelled to Rome, Amsterdam and Paris, where he entered into contact with the abstract avant-garde movements of the post-war period. Upon his return to Spain in 1957 he settled in Madrid, where he worked on the periphery of the non-objective movements, on the boundaries of figuration, creating an abstraction in which it is possible to glimpse images. Following sojourns in Ibiza and Mallorca in the 1960s, he introduced greater spontaneity and luminosity into his works, leading to the whitening of the dirtier and greyer backgrounds of his previous period.

Until the end of his life he maintained his vocabulary of signs and profiles of sketchily outlined figures which seem to float magically in space. He created subtle atmospheres and dream-like effects reminiscent of much of the lyrical non-objectivity characterising the work of Wassily Kandinsky (1866—1944) or Paul Klee (1879—1940).

Both Gente saliendo and Personajes andando, the two works in the BBVA Collection, show Mompó’s affinity with the work of Joan Miró (1893—1983) and children’s graphics. The space is configured with lines, geometric forms, signs and even words that make up his personal sources for representing the everyday life of public streets, squares and urban spaces. His painting is readily recognisable due to his use of flat albeit bright colours and symbols devoid of any volume which nevertheless manage to define the space to perfection.