Manolo Valdés (born March 8, 1942) is a Spanish artist residing in New York, working in paint, sculpture, and

mixed media In visual art, mixed media describes artwork in which more than one medium or material has been employed. Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different media. Materials used to create mixed media art incl ...

. He introduced to Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony.

Biography

Manolo Valdés was born in

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

on March 8, 1942. He entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in 1957, where he studied two years. In 1964 he established the artists' group Equipo Crónica with Joan Toledo and Rafael Solbes in which he remained until Solbes' death in 1981. He now lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

with a further residence in The Hamptons and Miami.

Work

Influenced by Velázquez,

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, and others Valdés creates large works in which the lighting and colors express a sensation of tactility. His work is forceful and decorated with historical art symbols. Valdés creates paintings, monumental sculptures,

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

s, and collages. Along with the works he exhibited as a part of ''Equipo Crónicas,'' Valdés had over seventy expositions between 1965 and 1981, as many individual as collective. His work has been displayed at prestigious art galleries and museums, notably; Guggenheim in New York,

Opera Gallery Opera Gallery is a modern and contemporary art gallery presenting work by established and emerging artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Founded in Paris in 1994 by Gilles Dyan, Opera Gallery now has thirteen exhibition spaces in New York, ...

New York, the Hirschhorn in Washington, DC, and multiple art capitals of the world such as London, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Rome, Seoul, Istanbul, The Hague, and Monaco etc. Valdés has received various awards, including the Lissone and Biella in Milan in 1965; the silver medal in the second International Prints Biennial in Tokyo; an award from the Bridgestone Art Museum in Lisbon; the Alfons Roig Award in Valencia; the National Award for Plastic Arts in Spain; a medal from the biennial International Festival of the Plastic Arts in Baghdad; and in 1993 the Medal of the Order of

Andrés Bello Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López (; November 29, 1781 – October 15, 1865) was a Venezuelan- Chilean humanist, diplomat, poet, legislator, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an ...

in Venezuela. The sociologist

Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman (; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrate ...

has qualified him as one of the most outstanding exponents of liquid art, in his work ''Liquid Life'', together with

Herman Braun-Vega Herman Braun-Vega (7 July 1933 in Lima — 2 April 2019 in Paris) was a Peruvian painter and artist. Although his work has always been figurative, it was at first (before 1970) close to abstraction. It experienced a decisive turning point when t ...

and

Jacques Villeglé Jacques Villeglé, born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé (27 March 1926 – 6 June 2022) was a French mixed-media artist and affichiste famous for his alphabet with symbolic letters and decollage with ripped or lacerated posters. He was a membe ...

Gallery

File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 01 lou.JPG File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 07 lou.JPG File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 04 lou.JPG File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 05 lou.JPG File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 03 lou.JPG File:Valladolid Manolo Valdes Expo 2006 08 lou.JPG File:Manolo Valdés Las Meninas.jpg File:Manolo Valdés Las Meninas Detail.jpg File:Escultura de la Menina en Alcobendas.jpg File:Perfil II.jpg

References

External links

Galeria Freites

A Spanish biography

Manolo Valdés: Biography and critical analysis

Equipo Crónica
Trained as a painter, Valdés grew up imbibing the works of Spanish masters like Diego Velázquez and Pablo Picasso, later becoming influenced by Pop Art. 20th-century Spanish painters 20th-century Spanish male artists Spanish male painters 21st-century Spanish painters Spanish sculptors Spanish male sculptors 1942 births Living people 20th-century sculptors Spanish contemporary artists 21st-century Spanish male artists {{Spain-sculptor-stub