Manuel Hernández Mompó

MANUEL HERNÁNDEZ MOMPÓ (Valencia, 1927 – Madrid, 1992).
Untitled, 1976.
Ink on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Bibliography: Carlos Pérez and Inés Vallejo, Manuel Hernández Mompó. Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings. 1969–1986, vol. II, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Telefónica, Madrid, 2005 (work included in the catalog raisonné).
Measurements: 27 x 20 cm; 38 x 32 cm (frame).

Created in 1976, the drawing belongs to Mompó’s mature period, when his artistic language had achieved a remarkable synthesis between figuration and abstraction. After settling in Mallorca in the mid-1970s, he continued to refine his painting and drawing, built from increasingly light and essential marks. Here, a few strokes of ink suffice to define a figure in motion, leaving large areas of the paper untouched. The economy of line and the prominence of negative space lend the image an almost calligraphic spontaneity, highly characteristic of his approach to drawing.

Manuel Hernández Mompó was one of the most distinctive figures in postwar Spanish abstraction. He participated in the 1968 Venice Biennale, where he won the UNESCO Prize, and received the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1984. The IVAM dedicated a major retrospective to him in 1991, and his work is extensively represented in the Reina Sofía Museum’s collection.