José Antonio Pineda Bueno was born in Motril, Granada, Spain on August 5, 1950. As a child, his first games changed gradually to an innate tendency to play with a handful of colored pencils that he used in making a small rainbow of dreams in a path of interior designs loaded with almost unconscious chromatic aberrations and copious strokes. His family, seeing the unusual interest in drawing which tiny José Antonio demonstrated, decided to enroll him in the nearby Escuela de Artes when he was barely six years old. Within the erudite walls of the school he learned to control his torrential impetuosity of childish imagination and to confine himself to the sternness of an inert model. He developed there the needed abilities that years later have formed an important part of his manner of confronting artistic creativity.

At the age of eight, Bueno's family left Motril and moved to Barcelona, where José Antonio completed his studies at the Instituto Ribas, an educational center situated on the Paseo de la Vall d'Hebron. At age sixteen he began working at various jobs where he acquired skills which were important in forming his future career as a painter. At twenty-one years of age, Bueno became part of a newly-formed editorial business dedicated to child and youth illustrations. This work was complex and challenging, but highly gratifying and filled with promise. Little by little, Bueno developed greater artistic ability. Opened before his eyes a new path which led him to search out the landscapes of Amettla de Mar, a land bewitched by the magic of the Mediterranean, lost among the dancing rocks, steep cliffs, and warm golden beaches. It was there that he displayed his first exhibition.