Manolo Millares

MANOLO MILLARES SALL (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1936 - Madrid, 1972).
Untitled.
Drypoint engraving, copy 55/100.
Justified and with information of the print run in the folder.
Taller Calcográfico Editorial Gustavo Gili.
Certificate attached.
Measurements: 44.7 x 25 cm (plate); 63 x 45 cm (paper); 66 x 51 cm (folder).

Co-founder of the group El Paso in 1957, Millares began his career in the Canary Islands, imbued with the surrealist atmosphere developed around Óscar Domínguez. His work revolves around two essential concerns, which in reality are one and the same: surrealism with its interest in the subconscious and the primitive, and the deep roots of disappeared cultures, specifically those of the Guanches. Self-taught, Millares made his individual debut in 1945, at the Círculo Mercantil de Las Palmas, and after four years experimenting with surrealism he decided to focus his work definitively on abstraction. In 1951 he participated in the I Bienal Hispanoamericana de arte, held in Madrid, which was his definitive encounter with contemporary artistic reality. That same year he held his first exhibition in the peninsula, in the Jardín galleries in Barcelona. From that moment on he held exhibitions and participated in group shows in Spain, Cuba, Brazil, France, Germany and the United States, among other countries. In 1955 his work takes a fundamental turn, which will distinguish a before and after in his language, and that occurs around the discovery of burlap as a support. Thus, he left behind the works influenced by the Canarian pictographs, the result of his interest in surrealism and archeology, and began to use burlap as an element that he added to the surface of the painting, along with other materials such as sand, ceramics or wood. For the author, the sackcloth is an evocation of the cloth with which the Guanche mummies were wrapped, discovered by Millares in the Canary Island Museum. It is also 1955 the year of his establishment in Madrid; there, under the influence of Burri, the burlap will become the support, the essential element of his works. Two years later he will join the El Paso group, in which he will play a decisive role. Millares exploited to the maximum the possibilities of burlap, which he tore, tore, punctured, sewed and re-sewed, thus extolling the value of the material as a vehicle of expression. His palette is reduced and becomes sober, predominating the ochre of the sackcloth and the colors black, red and white. Abstraction is replaced by a recognizable figuration and the work acquires, even by the materials that make it up, a social and moral nuance. Until the mid-sixties black will be the main color of his works, but from 1964-65 onwards white will play an increasingly important role, as can be seen in his "Antropofaunas" and "Neandertalios".
Currently, Manolo Millares is represented in numerous museums around the world, such as the MOMA in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca or the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.