Manuel Ángeles Ortiz

MANUEL ANGELES ORTIZ (Jaén, 1895 - Paris, 1984).
Untitled, 1958.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 132 x 98 cm; 156 x 121 cm (frame).

In 1957, a year before creating this work, the painter Manuel Ángeles Ortiz returned to Granada after 32 years of absence. This reencounter with the landscape and culture of the city was a turning point that profoundly influenced his work, marking a crucial stage in his career. This particular piece was created just before his famous series dedicated to the Albaicín. As the Reina Sofia Museum pointed out in its exhibition, Ortiz's work is difficult to classify, a characteristic that is clearly seen in this piece. The artist fuses several languages: late cubism, line drawings and rounded volumes of classical inspiration. This mixture of styles reflects the different currents that, from magazines such as Cahiers d'Art to artists such as Jean Cocteau and Amédée Ozenfant, promoted a "return to order" at the time. Ángeles Ortiz was an independent artist whose work defies labels, as he remained in constant experimentation throughout his life.

A representative of the Spanish School of Paris, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz began his training in Granada, in the studio of José Larrocha. He later completed his studies at the Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales in the city, and then moved to Madrid, where he continued his training in the studio of Cecilio Plá. In 1915 he made his debut in a collective exhibition, receiving very good reviews in the local press. At the same time, he began to make drawings for different publications. In the early twenties, following the death of his wife, the painter moved to Paris. There he paints frenetically, and has in Picasso his main support and first enthusiast. His painting abandons cubic forms to focus on fully dreamlike images, which he will present in Paris in his first solo exhibition, held at the Quatre Chemins gallery in 1926. In 1932 he returns to Spain, but his anti-fascist stance leads him to take refuge, again in France, at the end of the Civil War. After a brief stay in Paris he went to Buenos Aires, where he became fully integrated in the artistic environment and lived there until 1948, when he returned to Paris for good. He is currently represented in the Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid, the ARTIUM in Vitoria, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Contemporary Art Museum in Seville, the Fine Arts Museum in Grenoble, the Federico García Lorca, Mapfre and Telefónica Foundations and the Bargera Gallery in Cologne, among other public and private collections.