Collages of Manolo Valdes

Written by Gabriel Diego Delgado

Assistant Director Rosenbaum Contemporary

Perfil III, a 47 ?” x 35 ?” inch collage by Manolo Valdés encompasses a critical art history lesson via visual aesthetic. On the surface, the viewer sees a left facing woman’s profile with collaged magazine paper that constructs the blouse and head ornamentations. There are several translucent papers arranged over and covering the face and neck.  These lucent shrouds mimic a veil, giving an implied hierarchal context for the anonymous figure. 

Upon closer inter-reflection, the collaged magazines and images on the two sections of the female’s composition properly give creditable homage to both Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, the legitimate forefathers of traditional collage application in modern art.  

Born in 1942, in Valencia, Spain, Valdés enrolled at the Fine Arts Academy of San Carlos, Valencia when he was fifteen years old.  Initially trained as a fine art painter, Valdés chose to experiment with various art making techniques from collage, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture.  In 1964 at the age of 22, Valdés co-founded the Equipo Crónica, an artist collective joined by Rafael Solbes and Joan Toldeo; a venture that would lead these three artists to effectively use the notions of Pop Art to effectively project criticisms onto the government of Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.  As documented, Valdés participated in over sixty solo exhibitions and an abundance of group exhibitions under the guise of Equipo Crónicauntil 1981, which was dissolved upon the death of Rafael Solbes. 

In 1982, Valdés turned to collage and paper as his core materials; he shunned the trending aspects of Abstract Expressionism and devoted his energy on the figure. He presents his imagery as appropriations and fragments of the important art history lineages. Historically, Valdés’ heads and portraits are unabashedly inspired by “art” more than anything else. 

His investigations are unequivocally a self-guiding inquisition into an archived artistic lineage , a type of internalization and contextual assimilation of the fundamentals of art history. The traditional masters like Goya, Rembrandt and Velázquez were seemingly pristine inspirations for Valdés. Conceptions of reinventing the physical images arose in his work as he strove to cement a new artistic vision.  From Picasso to Brancusi, from Degas to El Greco, Valdés took aim at achieving a constant experimentation of art making, culling from traditional and conceptual. Timeless images appear in artworks as manipulated assemblages and hand-torn paper collages.

A great comparison and mirrored evaluation of Valdés’ artwork can be seen in the culled authorities of masterpieces byDiego Velázquez: “Portrait of The Infanta Maria Teresa” and ‘The Queen Mariana of Austria”; Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”; and Peter Paul Ruben’s “Young Woman with Curly Hair”and “Portrait of Helena Fourment”. Angelic renditions of nobility and aristocracy are parleyed with modern art abstractions to create timeless minimalist portrayals.

Renowned Latin American Museum Curator, Maria Luz Cardenas once wrote, “The ideas of transparency and collage are…works that alludes to latticework. The air penetrates between the drawing and the headdress and provides lightness to the volume achieved in the midst of strength and the perpetual transformation of iron.”

In this academic context alone, we understand the paper in Valdés’ artwork can achieve implied volumetric properties, ones that exist in his other metal sculptures–an inferred possession that captures this artist’s ability to capture a master’s essence. 

Manolo Valdés

Perfil III, 2015

Collage

47.24 x 35.43 inches (120 x 90 cm)

(RC 11477)

Available at Rosenbaum Contemporary 

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