History of a vocational engraver

By Tomás Álvarez

Journalist and writer from Cepeda

José Holguera (born in León in 1965) has a timeless and lost in thought appearance. Most times he receives visitors covered in his bluish dressing gown, resembling more a worker of a 19th century workshop than a modern one. Following León’s spirit, he is serious and cutting, more interested in listening than in explaining. His studio/shop is practically hidden, as if the engraver despised the modern techniques of marketing and communication. There are no signs, just a huge window where he exhibits some of his works. Several are related to León, but many others are inspired in Saint James Way, as Holguera has been working for years in a collection of sheets about the topic, such as the recent ones he carved about Navarra and La Rioja.

Churches, palaces, popular architecture and landscapes are reflected in this superior collection of art, always preceded by a thorough visit to the places where the artist intends to find, as he says, “the soul of the Way”. Last May he started the collection of copies of Navarra, in which he includes scenes ranging from Saint Jean Pied de Port, in the area of the Pyrenees, to Viana, near the Ebro River. A few months ago he has finished his chapter of La Rioja, and now he has a set a course for Burgos, full of relevant monuments and emplacements.

Holguera always loved drawing. When he was seven he was awarded his first drawing contest diploma. He was still very young when he started to work in a chemical plant, but he could combine it with his Technical drawing and Engineering studies. Guided by his passion for pictorial expression, he first worked with painting – charcoal drawing, oil and pastel drawings – but later on he focused on engraving, establishing his workshop in the center of León. For a while he carried out several works that he did not intended to commercialize until the manager of an art gallery located in Salamanca (Arte Miranda) discovered his art and requested an extensive amount of them. Since then, he quit his work at the factory Quita Antibióticos to further develop his artistic vocation. Nowadays he is exclusively centered in the art of engraving, and by using etching, aquatint, drypoint and other techniques he carries out works that are admired by all those who walk through the Puerta Moneda street, next to the Romanesque Church del Mercado and a compulsory path for all those pilgrims in their way to Santiago de Compostela. Many of these people passing by take advantage of their visit to the workshop and acquire a specific piece of art that creates a particular feeling inside them: Roncesvalles, Zubiri Bridge, El Alto del Perdón, Puente La Reina, Santa María de Nájera… This Jubilee wave attracts people from vastly different backgrounds. Therefore, his studio has been visited by executives of New York’s MOMA and by Picasso’s descendants among others, as testified by the guestbook present there. Maybe because of the special way he treats walkers or probably due to his pilgrim fondness, José Holguera has focused on El Camino in his eternal work. Each piece is handmade, from the engraving (etching, aquatint) to the stamping, carried out with a rolling press following intaglio models from the 16th century, explains Holguera. Navarra’s folder includes eleven pages, with 38 sheets (16 of copper, 15 of zinc and 7 dry stamps); La Rioja’s, seven pages with 31 sheets (6 of copper, 18 of zinc and 7 dry stamps). “I am in no rush to complete de Jubilee collection – states the author – it might take me five more years to finish it”, says this admirer of Goya’s and Piranesi’s works. Meanwhile, for fundraising purposes, Holguera sells some of his sheets, keeping apart others for those who would like to acquire the entire folder of a region, of even for those interested in the whole Way.

Holguera works in a series of sheets in which he wants to find “the soul of Saint James Way”.

Currently, the engraver has completed the Camino de Santiago collection. It was embraced by the Diocese of León, and exhibited at the Palat del Rey Romanesque church.

León, 2018