Manolo Valdes
From his audacious Pop art paintings that challenged Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s regime during the 1960s to his modern reinterpretation of works by masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Valencia native Manolo Valdés has created an extraordinary range of work. He is internationally renowned as one of the most influential Spanish artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Born in 1942, Valdés studied art at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia. As his career began to take shape, in 1964, Valdés cofounded Equipo Crónica with fellow Spanish artists Rafael Solbes and Juan Antonio Toledo. Together, the collective produced politically charged graphic Pop works, which frequently merged imagery that referenced Spain’s history and culture, in order to expressly denounce Franco’s oppressive government. Toledo left Equipo Crónica after one year, and the group disbanded after Solbes’s death in 1981.
From 1981 onward, Valdés focused on his solo career. In his portraits, still-life prints and figurative sculptures, Valdés adopts familiar images from masterpieces by some of the world’s most recognizable artists, including Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens and Roy Lichtenstein, and recontextualizes them, minimalizing forms and the use of color, introducing collagist elements and more. Examples of Valdés’s methods can be seen in the textured lithograph print Claribel (1995) and his contemporary sculpture Butterflies (2010), which is inspired by Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905).
Valdés has exhibited his works around the world, including in New York City, Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin, Geneva and Mexico City. In 1999, he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale. His paintings and sculptures are also held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Moderna Museet in Malmö, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
On 1stDibs, discover a range of original Manolo Valdés prints, sculptures and mixed media.
Early 2000s American Modern Manolo Valdes
Other
20th Century Spanish Manolo Valdes
Paper
1950s French Vintage Manolo Valdes
Paper
Late 20th Century Manolo Valdes
Oak
Mid-20th Century American Manolo Valdes
Paper
Late 20th Century Manolo Valdes
Silk
Mid-20th Century French Mid-Century Modern Manolo Valdes
Wool
1960s French Mid-Century Modern Vintage Manolo Valdes
Glass, Wood, Paper
20th Century American Post-Modern Manolo Valdes
Copper
1960s American Vintage Manolo Valdes
Paint, Paper
1960s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Manolo Valdes
Paper
1980s Italian Modern Vintage Manolo Valdes
Paper
20th Century American Modern Manolo Valdes
Paint, Paper
Late 20th Century Manolo Valdes
Paper
21st Century and Contemporary Spanish Expressionist Manolo Valdes
Wood, Paint, Paper
Early 2000s Spanish Manolo Valdes
Paper
2010s Spanish Manolo Valdes
