Manolo Valdes Spanish, b. 1942
Manolo Valdés is one of the most important and respected contemporary artists, and one of the few living artists today who has succesfully mastered the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. In each medium he proves to be technically skilled, highly original, and unceasingly provocative.
Born in Valencia, Spain, in 1942, Manolo Valdés was a founding member of Equipo Cronica, the highly influential Spanish Pop Art group of the 1960s. After the group disbanded in 1981 due to the death of one of its members- Rafael Solbes, Valdés commenced a succesful solo career. Renowned for his passion for past masters from Zurbarán to Velazquez. Matisse to Lichtenstein. Valdés uses their creations "as a pretext" (como pretexto) to create an entirely new aesthetic object. The artist lives and works in New York and Miami.
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, 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 in Venezuela.
