César Manrique Cabrera

CÉSAR MANRIQUE CABRERA (Lanzarote, 1919 - 1992).
"After the rain", 1980.
Mixed media (with addition of matter) on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 50 x 61 cm; 70 x 81 cm (frame).
Painter, sculptor and architect, Manrique was formed between Lanzarote and Madrid, where he studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. In 1942 he made his individual debut in Lanzarote, and during the fifties, with the rise of surrealism, he founded the Fernando Fe gallery, the first non-figurative gallery in Spain. During these years he painted several murals in Lanzarote and exhibited his work in several countries. In 1964 he moved to New York where he exhibited, among others, at the Catherine Viviano Gallery. Two years later he settled definitively in Lanzarote where, together with the architect Fernando Higueras, he undertook various projects on the island. In 1992, a few months before his death in a traffic accident, the Foundation that bears his name was inaugurated in Lanzarote. His artistic work earned him awards such as the Gold Medal of Fine Arts (1980), the Goslarer Monchenhsus Prize in Germany (1981), the Van D'Aheod Prize in the Netherlands (1982) and the Fritz Schumacher Prize in Hamburg (1989), among others. He is currently represented in the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español and the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, among other centers and collections.
In his work, both pictorial and sculptural and, above all, architectural, Manrique enters into dialogue with the roots of the Canary Islands, with the Guanche culture, with its traditional constructions, its landscape, its folklore, its pre-Hispanic art. In this piece he pays homage to all that legacy, in a work where matter, which refers to the earth, to the volcanoes, to the fire that "built" and defined the island of Lanzarote, is an essential part.