In late 1931 and early 1932, Moreno Villa produced his most curious and sensitive experimental works on smoked papers that were used for cardiology tests. The idea came to him during a coffee time tertulia in Juan Negrín’s laboratory of Physiology, in the Residencia de Estudiantes. The so-called grafumos are unique in Moreno Villa’s œuvre for their technique and the few grafumos that he produced. Some of these grafumos were part of his exhibition held that year in Bilbao and Madrid. The Basque Artists Association bought one of them for the Provincial Museum’s collections, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, in Bilbao. An anonymous person bought another one in the Madrid exhibition; Moreno Villa was intrigued and personally delivered the grafumo at the address given by the buyer, who turned out to be the Mexican ambassador, his friend, Genaro Estrada.
He participated in the third exhibition organized by the Federation of the Arts-AGAP, in Madrid’s Museum of Modern Art.
He was one of the major poets included in the famous anthology of Spanish poetry edited by his friend, Gerardo Diego. According to his correspondence, Moreno Villa was very interested in the poetry that Juan Larrea was writing then.