About seventy works (coming from the artist's studio and from important private collections) including paintings and sculptures (in wood, marble, bronze, alabaster, brass, steel, iron, etc.), some of which are large, photograph, at the Palazzo Cipolla Museum in Rome the creative path of Manolo Valdés the great Spanish artist, who returns to Rome 25 years after the solo exhibition he held at the Galleria Il Gabbiano in 1995.
Co-founder of the historic Equipo Crónica, the pioneering group of Pop Art in Spain, from which he then came out in the early 80s, Manolo Valdes born in Valencia in 1942, but a long-time American citizen, is an artist who introduced in Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony.
In his figurative and playfully visionary research, the artists of the more or less distant past (from Velázquez to Rubens and Zurbarán, from El Greco to Ribera up to Léger, Matisse, Lichtenstein, etc.) become interlocutors with whom to maintain daily contact, with whom pay homage and which expand the polyphonic space of his work. It is as if the image taken by Valdés in the more or less recent past had been transformed by incorporating the changes of subsequent art (especially through the informal and Pop Art) until arriving in a new guise before us, with the holes and the lacerations of matter impressed by this long journey through time.
As Gabriele Simongini writes, «the work-matrix, of capital importance for Valdés' inexhaustible comings and goings in the labyrinth of art history, is Velázquez's “Las Meninas”, above all for that intertwining between reality and illusion, for that play with truth and appearances, which constitute the heart of that masterpiece and of the Spanish Baroque but also of Valdés' work itself. The artist manages, almost by magic, to give a sculptural three-dimensionality to figures and characters previously "condemned" to the two-dimensionality of the canvas, and operates a continuous reversal of roles in the plastic values attributed to painting with its overflowing materiality and in the pictorial values given often to sculpture through the importance of color, as well as in the surprising plastic "materialization" of the design in works of considerable size but with an extreme visual and poetic lightness.».
For Emmanuele Emanuele, President of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Internazionale, who organized the exhibition “Manolo Valdés. The forms of time": «Valdés' works, whether they are paintings or sculptures, are permeated by a disruptive strength and vitality, transmitted by the skilful workmanship that the artist makes of the most varied materials, to the point of communicating to the eye almost a sensation tactile.
After graduating from the Dominican school in Valencia, in 1957 Valdes enrolled in the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, which he however left two years later to devote himself to painting. In 1962 he held his first solo exhibition at the Nebli Gallery in Madrid and in 1964, together with Jean A. Toledo and Rafael Solbes, he founded the Equipo Cronica group. Their works combine elements of English and American Pop Art with the figurative aesthetics of the XNUMXs Nueva Figuracion movement, highlighting a critical look at Spanish politics and art history. The group practices quotation and self-criticism, also drawing inspiration from the works of masters such as Pablo Picasso and Diego Velásquez.
Toledo left the group in 1965, but Valdés and Solbes continued to work holding the first Equipo Cronica exhibition in Reggio Emilia that year. They participate in numerous other exhibitions, including "Kunst und Politik" exhibited in Karlsruhe, Wuppertal and Cologne in 1970. The group dissolves with the death of Soldes in 1981. Valdés continues to work by appropriating images associated with specific historical-artistic movements , however without the political implications that characterize the previous works.
In 1991 he exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. In 1999, together with Carles Santos and Esther Ferren, she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale. In 2002 the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao dedicated a retrospective to him. His work investigates on the one hand the specific qualities of painting, on the other it reveals a meticulous work of appropriation which, through details of the paintings of great masters such as Henri Matisse, Éduard Manet, Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, etc., gives rise to a personal style that practices a historical revision without nullifying the value of the original. Also active in the field of sculpture, the artist currently lives and works in New York.
Rome, Palazzo Cipolla Museum, Via del Corso
“Manolo Valdés. The forms of time
From 17 October 2020 to 10 January 2021
Promoter of the International Third Pillar Foundation
Organizer Poema Spa and Galleria Contini of Venice
www.fondazioneterzopilastrointernazionale.it
OPENING HOURS
Monday CLOSED from Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 > 20.00
(The ticket office service ends one hour before closing, 19.00)
