Jose Saénz de Heredia
At his home in Madrid, Spain.
Jose is an illustrator from Madrid, whose style has clearly been inspired by comic culture. Since he started drawing as a child, a world of superheroes and space battles was predominantly recorded on dozens of sketch books during his school years.
I met Jose when I was 3 years old in a little preschool in our neighborhood, and 10 years later we end up in the same class as teenagers. In those years he establishes his name as ‘koltcha', derived from the word ‘culture’ - and pronounced with a slight twist originating from the hip-hop world -and starts drawing music inspired scenes, works on a gang comic while he plays music with friends.
Jose has been applying himself for some years to making 'Earth Sutra'. A documentary about Tibet, which finally saw the light earlier this year. His involvement and perseverance were justified by a genuine will to give a voice to the oppressed people of Tibet. He treated it as a personal quest to reach a wider audience, and to satisfy his karma. He was not only committed as one of the directors and main producers of the documentary, but also as a designer, shaping the visual side of the project with his own illustrations.
Jose moved to Barcelona where he studied digital art after an attempt to go through architecture school in Madrid. The tenuous rigid discipline can't be easy for someone with so many talents. He also has a keen musical sensibility, and for years had a rock band with some of his friends, known as Hotel La Paz, which brought some intriguing compositions during his time in Barcelona.
Jose’s career has became somewhat more established since moving back to his native Madrid, where he now secures a more stable flow of commercial contracts with agencies, which keep him both grounded and productive, while he keeps developing the talent that allows him to draw so freely.