Painter and printmaker José García Ortega was born in Arroba de los Montes, in the province of Ciudad Real, Spain, on December 17, 1921. After his family relocated to Madrid when he was a teenager, he taught himself how to draw and honed his skills as a graphic artist by designing posters for various organizations who focused on anti-Franco sentiment as the Spanish Civil War set in. In 1941, after the end of the war, he formally joined the Spanish Communist Party and took jobs as a painter and decorator; however, in 1948 he was charged with anti-government activites and was sent to prison until his early release in 1952, whereupon he enrolled in the National School of Graphic Arts and the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.

After one year Ortega was granted a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. While there he earned a gold medal for his graphic art at the Warsaw International Youth Festival. After completing his studies he returned to Spain where he held a major an exhibition at the Alfil Gallery, Madrid with the printmakers Palacios Tardez and Ruiz Pernias; in 1958, the three artists founded the Grupo Estampa Popular, and together published the Manifesto Against Art.

Once again persecuted for his political beliefs, he was exiled from Spain by Franco's government in 1960 and he returned to Paris. He entered the studio of Johnny Friedlaender who introduced him to intaglio printmaking and in 1961 he participated in an exhibition of graphic artists at the Gallery Epona in Paris and the Pläne Gallery in Dusseldorf. He soon focused primarily on printmaking, and in 1963 he was awarded the gold medal of the International Congress of Art Critics.

In 1964 Ortega moved temporarily to Italy, living first in Rome and then Matera, studying new intaglio techniques as well as easel painting and the locally celebrated Materan technique of papier-mache bas relief. Between 1969 and 1970 he would produce twenty prints for the portfiolio "Los Segadores", which combined both lithography and intaglio techniques in a technique he had begun developing at the Estampa Popular workshop. This was followed by a series of 60 etchings inspired by Albrecht Dürer which he exhibited at the Museum of Nuremberg in a show titled "Ortega + Dürer". In 1976, after the death of Franco, Ortega returned briefly to Spain to exhibit in Madrid and Balboa before settling permanently in Paris; he would visit the homeland of his birth just a couple of times, once to present his series "Decalogue for a Spanish Democracy" at Tartessos Bookstore in Ciudad Real, and then to collaborate with the Communist Party in Spain's first democratic elections.

Ortega continued to work and exhibit until his death on December 24, 1990. A restrospective of his work titled "Jose Ortega: Witness of Mediterranean Culture" was held at the Palazzo-Malvini in Matera, Italy on the centenary of his birth in 2021. A museum of his work and life, titled "The Casa Ortega Project", was founded in Matera, Italy, in a Lombard fortress honoring the time he spent there after his exile.

Works by Ortega are held in the Casa Ortega Project and the Claude Jongen Collection, Paris.