Manolo Valdes

Manolo Valdés is one of few artists today who has successfully mastered the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking. Valdés was born in Valencia, Spain in 1942. At the age of 15, he began his training as a painter at the Fine Arts Academy of San Carlos, Valencia. His time there allowed him to make contact with the young artists of the time, among them was Rafael Solbes. In 1964 Valdés, Rafael Solbes, and Joan Toledo collaborated to form “Equipo Crónica,” an artistic team that utilized Pop Art to question the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the history of art itself. Like El Paso or Dau al Set, Equipo Crónica is one of the reference points of Spanish Art in the second half of the twentieth century. Joan Toledo left the group a year later, but Valdés and Solbes continued together until Solbes died in 1981.

Valdés has sense reinvented himself as a soloist and has emerged as one of the foremost living Spanish artists. Once he began to work alone, Valdés moved away from linear irony to interpret the image as a symbol and a vehicle for contact between the work of Art and the spectator. To this end he has continued to seek inspiration in the creations of the grand masters of the history of art, such as Velázquez, Rembrandt or Goya. He reinterprets them in visual games that delve into cultural memory. As he himself has said, “painting is learned from painting.” His newly refined, expressive style is often centered on art-historical motifs, but without the political overtones and slick painting style that had characterized Equipo Cronica's work. By quoting figures from well-known works of art, he revitalizes these familiar images by taking them out of their original context. In both paintings and sculptures, he inflates the figure's size, abstracting form and minimizing detail, while incorporating a lot of roughly applied paint and unusual materials.

Both in his early period with Equipo Crónica as well as in his later development by himself, he has drawn heavily upon Spanish artistic heritage, particularly the work of Velázquez and his immediate predecessors Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura, and Antoni Tàpies. His work is full with a sense of humor, even sarcasm, with large formats and flat colors.

The works of Manolo Valdés can be seen in numerous public and private collections including: Fonds National d'Arts Plastiques, Paris, France; Fundación Caja de Pensiones, Barcelona, Spain; Hispanic Society, New York, New York; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain; Kunsthalle, Kiel, Germany; Kunstmuseum, Berlin, Germany; Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany; Menil Foundation, Houston, Texas; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium.

Biography/background information from: http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/galleries/graphics/artists/manolo-valds/graphics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolo_Vald%C3%A9s http://www.arteseleccion.com/maestros-en/valdes-manolo-184 http://www.picassomio.com/manolo-valdes.html Manolo Valdés: Re-imagining History in Public Works 3:18 pm Wednesday Sep 1, 2010 by Paul Laster

One of Spain’s most celebrated contemporary artists, Manolo Valdés represented his homeland in the 1999 Venice Biennale and has since been honored with exhibitions of his monumental sculptures in Beijing, Miami, Monaco, San Francisco, and St. Petersburg. An accomplished draftsman, painter, and sculptor, he got his start in the political art collective Equipo Crónica, which used irony and art historical appropriation to comment on the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco. When his last remaining colleague in the collective died in 1981 and Spain finally returned to democratic rule, Valdés turned his attention to aesthetic pleasures, while still mining the past for content to transform — as witnessed in his concurrent public art shows on the avenues of New York and The Hague and at the Château de Chambord in France.

The New York display offers 16 of the artist’s larger-than-life bronzes, which range from a series of women’s heads that reference modernist masters, such as Picasso, Klee, and Matisse, to abstracted portrayals of royalty in oval-shaped hoop-dresses and figures on horseback that reinterpret famous works by Velázquez. Sited on Broadway from Columbus Circle to 166th Street, the powerful pieces transform the commercial thoroughfare into a cultural treasure hunt that’s colorfully enhanced by the thriving flora, planted by the Broadway Mall Association, which also supported the Valdés show.

Columbus Circle is enlivened by four Reina Mariana sculptures, based on Velázquez’s portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria, whose hair is styled in the shape of her dress, and a female equestrian, whose sculptural form was first modeled in assembled corrugated cardboard before being cast in bronze — giving it a gritty, urban quality. The 72nd Street subway station has two more Reina Mariana figures flanking its southern entrance and a reclining head of an odalisque, based on a figure in a Matisse painting, at the station’s northern side. Singular — nearly faceless — heads with dynamic hair and hats, along with a male equestrian, are placed intermittently from 63rd Street to the finish at 166th Street, spreading the show over more than 100 blocks.

Valdés’ exhibition in The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands, is located on the historic Lange Voorhout, a boulevard that dates back to the time of Charles V. Fifteen massive bronzes, similar to those in New York, with more heads and varied patinas, fill the shaded promenade; but the closeness of their placement and views of the surrounding period architecture make for a completely different interaction. Paintings and works on paper by the artist are also on view in the nearby Kloosterkerk, the city’s oldest church, and Pulchri Studio, an artists’ society dating back to 1847.

Meanwhile, the show at the Château de Chambord, the largest castle in the Loire Valley, surveys Valdés’ oeuvre from the past 30 years, including wood sculptures of books stacked on tables and pots arranged on shelves, as well as expressive paintings of figures and objects on burlap. Disneyland-like in appearance, the 500-year-old castle hosts Valdés’ work both within its classic interiors and on its majestic lawns. Several heads sit high on pedestals and line the walkway to the entrance of the château, while bronzes and figurative works on paper, representing the Reina Mariana and the Infanta Margarita, from Velázquez’s famous Las Meninas painting, are among many pieces displayed in the castle’s grand rooms.

Manolo Valdés: Monumental Sculpture on Broadway in on view in New York through January 23, 2011, while Manolo Valdés at The Hague Sculpture 2010 in the Netherlands and Manolo Valdés á Chambord at the Château de Chambord in Loir-et-Cherruns, France run through September 12. http://flavorwire.com/115186/manolo-valdes-re-imagining-history-in-public-works