Manolo Valdés

MANOLO VALDÉS (Valencia, 1942)
"Rodrigo de la Fuente III".
Mixed media on burlap.
Signed on the back.
Attached certificate issued by the artist (New York, 2023).
Provenance: Maeght Gallery, Barcelona.
Measurements: 100 × 81 cm, 107 × 89 cm (with frame).

In "Rodrigo de la Fuente III", Manolo Valdés proposes an image of great iconic force, where the figure is reduced to its minimum expression to become presence. The face, stripped of features and barely suggested by a light mass, emerges against a dark background that envelops the composition, generating a tension between appearance and concealment.

The use of burlap, a characteristic material in the artist's production, introduces an essential material dimension: the surface absorbs the paint, leaving the traces of the process visible and reinforcing the physical character of the work. Far from descriptive representation, Valdés works from the memory of art history, reinterpreting classic genres -such as portraiture- through a contemporary, austere and refined language.

The figure, anonymous and silent, refers both to the Spanish pictorial tradition and to a broader reflection on identity and its dissolution. In this sense, the work is situated in one of the artist's most recognizable lines: the construction of essential images, where the weight of the material and the economy of means generate a contained visual intensity.

Compared to the graphic work of this same motif, the unique pieces made in mixed media on textile support occupy a clearly superior position in the international market. Due to their singularity, their material load and their unrepeatable character, this type of work constitutes the most solid and valued nucleus of Valdés' production.

Manolo Valdés is one of the most internationally renowned contemporary Spanish artists. Co-founder of Equipo Crónica, he has developed since the eighties a solid individual career marked by the reinterpretation of art history.

His work has been the subject of important exhibitions and retrospectives -among them at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía- and has been shown in cities such as New York, Paris and Venice. He has also presented monumental sculptures in international public spaces, consolidating his presence in the global arena.

He is represented in reference collections such as the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London or the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, among others.

Awarded with the National Prize of Plastic Arts, his work is today among the most recognized and demanded of Spanish contemporary art.