Manolo Valdés

MANOLO VALDÉS BLASCO (Valencia, 1942).
"Abstraction", 1961.
Matter on canvas.
Signed and dated on the back.
Provenance: The painting was made in 1961 by Manuel Valdés when he was a student at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia, which at that time was located in the old Centro del Carmen, on Museo Street in Valencia. That same year the artist won the School's painting prize. At that time he was 19 years old and the Equipo Crónica group had not yet been formed.
After the competition, the work was donated by the artist as a wedding gift to Enrique Puig Fernández and María Amparo Soriano. The couple kept the painting for years in their home.
Enrique Puig and María Amparo Soriano had no children. They maintained a very close relationship with Juan Antonio Ortuño and Ana María Costa, who took care of them for many years. In gratitude, and on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary, Enrique Puig and María Amparo Soriano gave the painting as a gift to this couple, and it has remained in their family ever since.
Measurements: 66 x 81 cm, 67.5 x 82.5 cm (frame).

Here Manolo Valdés leaves aside the figuration he used to turn his art into a social tool, and fully introduces himself into the material experimentation of informalism. Thus, he works with relief, with tactile qualities, without strokes or brushstrokes, but nevertheless he does not lose the clearly Hispanic character that so often characterized his work. Thus, the relief of the material creates effects of half shadows, and the baroque atmosphere is captured through an organic color, even dirty, which evokes deep emotions in the viewer.

Manolo Valdés introduced in Spain a form of artistic expression that combines political and social commitment with humor and irony. He began his training in 1957, when he entered the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia. However, two years later he abandoned his studies to devote himself fully to painting. In 1964 he founded the artistic group Equipo Crónica, together with Juan Antonio Toledo and Rafael Solbes, in which he remained until the latter's death in 1981, despite the fact that Toledo had left the group two years after its foundation. Since then he has settled in New York, where he currently resides and where he has continued to experiment with new forms of expression, including sculpture. Among the numerous awards Manolo Valdés has received are the Lissone and Biella of Milan (1965), the silver medal of the II International Biennial of Engravings of Tokyo (1979), the prize of the Bridgestone Art Museum in Lisbon (1979), the National Prize of Plastic Arts (1983), the medal of the International Festival of Plastic Artists of Baghdad (1986), the Decoration of the Order of Andres Bello in Venezuela (1993), the award of the National Council of Monaco (1997), the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts (1998), the Award of the Spanish Association of Art Critics (2000) and the Best Print Artist Award (2002), among others.

With Equipo Crónica, Valdés used figuration as a vehicle of expression for his approaches, for his criticisms of art, society and politics, but prioritizing above any other content the pure act of painting. From the thematic point of view, Valdés was inspired by the art of the great masters of painting: Goya, Velázquez, El Greco, Ribera or Zurbarán, and he never hides his models, but rather emphasizes them, even in the titles of his works. Formally, he creates a large format work in which lights and colors express tactile values, due to the treatment given to the materials. His work forces the viewer to delve into memory and search for significant images from the history of art.
Valdés is represented in some of the most outstanding museums around the world, such as the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Metropolitan, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Georges Pompidou Center and the Fons National d'Arts Plastiques in Paris, the Kusnthalle in Hamburg, the Kunstmuseum in Berlin and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, among many others.