Jose Crespo is a Spanish sculptor & painter originary from the Mediterranean city of Castellon de la Plana.  Due to his military carrier he has been appointed to different posts in Spain, Belgium, United States, France and Romania. He has taken advantage of this fact to get to know new people, new places and landscapes where to focus his art.

He originates from a family with a long history of art and from his formative years was inspired to draw with both pencil and ink. Jose is a self-taught artist, who gained a wealth of experience in learning from his father, a Spanish infantry Colonel.

Since 1997 the artist has moved to the sculpture, experimenting in modelling in clay and the process known as ‘lost-wax’ casting.

His artwork depicts figures from former military times, as well as characters in traditional dress and subjects of bullfighting such as bulls and bullfighters. One of the favorite subjects of the artist is privately commissioned clay busts sculpted from real life models.

Reenactments of historic battles are places where the author finds motives for his art. Places like Waterloo or Mons in Belgium and Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Saint Augustine or Williamsburg in the USA are visited by Jose Crespo and his actors transformed into paintings or bronze figures afterwards.

Artists like Cusachs i Cusachs, Ernest Meissonier, Edouard Detaille and Mariano Benlliure are continuous references for Jose Crespo, together with other artists like Mariano Fortuny, Jean-Leon Gerome, Norman Rockwell, Harold Foster or Lawrence Alma-Tadema among others. His early figures are developments from Cusachs paintings. The author has taken part in collective exhibitions in Washington DC and in a number of Spanish cities.  Two personal exhibitions have been displayed in Mons, Belgium and two more in Bucharest, Romania.

“The sculpture is my way of reproducing those things that I like”

 “Whatever the type of art – the artist is not ‘creating’, rather he is composing”