Ramon Dilley

It is the meeting with the sculptor Paul Belmondo that will decide the fate of Gomez Ramon y Romero. Paul Belmondo appreciates his artistic qualities and uses his influence to bring him into the Ecole du Louvre. However, it is as an autodidact that the young man approaches the world of painting. After a first contact with the Great Painting, where he never stopped copying the works of the masters in museums, he went around the world for two years, from 1965 to 1967. During these two years of wandering, he lived on product of his painting. Back in Paris, he followed the advice of auctioneer Maurice Rheims and took Ramon Dilley as a pseudonym. From his first exhibitions, Dilley found his style. The nostalgia of exile and periods of bygone happiness underlie its creation, where we find elegant 1930s and legendary seaside resorts. Deauville, Trouville, Cannes, Nice are his favorite subjects, and he populates these fashionable beaches with frivolous and carefree characters. This Scott Fitzgerald of painting is immediately successful. Very extrovert, Ramon Dilley seeks clients from the jet set and the world of cinema. The world of letters also welcomes him, and the painter befriends Mauriac, as with Giono and Marcel Achard. In 1968, he met Catherine Deneuve, who introduced him to Claude Chabrol. The director will become one of his passionate collectors. But there are also fans of the work of Dilley the Shah of Iran, Prince Rainier of Monaco and Valery Giscard d'Estaing.