Manolo Valdés

MANOLO VALDÉS BLASCO (Valencia, 1942).
"El conde Duque".
Silkscreen on paper. Final art / colour proof.
Work catalogued in the book "Fora de Serie, Serigrafies d'Ibero Suiza en la Col.lecció UPV", Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 2013, page 134.
Presents dry stamp of the Ibero-Swiss printing house.
Measurements: 116 x 68.5 cm.
In Spain, the Ibero-Swiss company took in the leading Spanish artists from the mid-1960s to the 1990s. The serigrapher José Llopis made this firm an indisputable reference in terms of artistic printing. From artists linked to pop art, optical art and geometric art to Zóbel and Tàpies, as well as artists with a clear political commitment such as Renau, Genovés, Equipo Crónica and Equipo Realidad, they all found Ibero-Suiza's silkscreen printing to be an ideal technique for their projects: they liked its industrial character, its procedures, the effects and nuances obtained, and the affinity of all this with the resources of the media.
The Polytechnic University of Valencia pays tribute to screen printing with the exhibition and book FORA DE SÈRIE. The exhibition includes, among many others, works by artists of the stature of Renau, Saura, Tàpies, Yturralde, Equipo Crónica, Gordillo, Guerrero, Sempere, Equipo Realidad, Carmen Calvo and Mompó. They all form part of the selection of 71 silkscreen prints from the Fons d'Art UPV, the legacy of the historic Ibero-Swiss workshop (1963-1998) that attracted leading Spanish artists to Valencia for decades.
Manolo Valdés introduced in Spain a form of artistic expression that combines political and social commitment with humour and irony. He began his training in 1957, when he entered the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia. However, two years later he abandoned his studies to devote himself fully to painting. In 1964 he founded the artistic group Equipo Crónica, together with Juan Antonio Toledo and Rafael Solbes, in which he remained until the latter's death in 1981, despite the fact that Toledo had left the group two years after its foundation. Since then he has settled in New York, where he currently lives and where he has continued to experiment with new forms of expression, including sculpture. Among the numerous awards Manolo Valdés has won are the Lissone and Biella awards in Milan, the silver medal at the II International Biennial of Engravings in Tokyo, the Bridgestone Art Museum prize in Lisbon, the National Prize for Plastic Arts, the medal of the International Festival of Fine Arts, and the medal of the International Festival of Fine Arts in Paris, among others, the medal of the International Festival of Plastic Artists of Baghdad, the Decoration of the Order of Andrés Bello in Venezuela, the prize of the National Council of Monaco, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, the Prize of the Spanish Association of Art Critics and the Prize for the Best Print Artist, among others. Formally, Valdés produces a large-format work in which the lights and colours express tactile values, due to the treatment given to the materials. His work forces the viewer to delve into memory and search for significant images from the history of art. He is represented in some of the world's leading museums, such as the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Metropolitan, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Fons National d'Arts Plastiques in Paris, the Kusnthalle in Hamburg, the Kunstmuseum in Berlin and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, among many others.