Interview with Manolo Valdés

22/06/16

Interview: Manolo Valdés

Manolo Valdés: Recent Work – Paintings and Sculptures 

Marlborough Fine Art

10 June - 16 July 2016

Arguably one of the most significant Spanish artists of the 20th century, Manolo Valdés (b1942, Valencia) works across a variety of media. He draws his inspiration from existing paintings that he likes, and then reinterprets fragments of them – usually faces – as large-scale paintings and sculptures. His work – and his life – is influenced by the developments in art history, and, like a magpie, he takes methods, media and ideas from his predecessors. He is permanently on the look out for images and interpretations and his enthusiasm and excitement are palpable.

Studio International spoke to him at the opening of his solo exhibition, Manolo Valdés: Recent Work – Paintings and Sculptures, at Marlborough Fine Art, where his daughter, Regina Valdes Montalva, kindly acted as interpreter.

Read the interview here

Review of Goya: The Portraits at the National Gallery

20/11/15

Goya: The Portraits

National Gallery

7 October 2015 – 10 January 2016

The late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, is not generally thought of in terms of light, rather in terms of darkness. His best-known works are arguably his fourteen Black Paintings, which depict, in very dark terms, the atrocities of the Napoleonic War and the artist’s fear of insanity. However, a third of Goya’s output comprises portraits and more than 150 of these still survive today. The current exhibition at the National Gallery, the first dedicated to this genre of his work, showcases nearly half of them.

Read the rest of this review here

Image:

Francisco de Goya

María Luisa wearing a Mantilla, 1799

Oil on canvas, 205 x 130 cm

Colecciones Reales, Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real de Madrid

© Patrimonio Nacional