Manolo Valdés Biography
Valencia (Spain), 1942
Master Spanish painter, sculptor, and printmaker Manolo Valdes was one of the founding members of Equipo Cronica, the highly influencial Pop Art group of 1906's Spain. With the death of fellow founding member Rafael Solbes in 1981, Valdes has reinvented himself as a soloist and has emerged as one of the foremost living Spanish artists.
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.
He lives and works in New York and Madrid.
SELECTED MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS - Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain - Fonds National d'Arts Plastiques, Paris, France - Fundacion Caja de Pensiones, Barcelona, Spain - I.V.A.M.. Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain - Kuntshalle, Kiel, Germany - Kuntsmuseum, Berlin, Germany - Kuntsmuseum Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany - Menil Foundation, Houston, Texas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France - Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico - Museum of Modern Art, New York - Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium.
