MANUEL VALDÉS
Valencia,(Spain) 1942 
He completed his training at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia. His early work, close to matter-focused Informalism, was shown at the Galería Neblí in 1962 and in the travelling exhibition España libre, where he met Solbes and Toledo. Together they founded Equipo Crónica in 1964. Until 1981 all Valdés’s work was done as a member of this group, combining reflection on paiting with social and political criticism. In his first solo exhibition after this stage (Maeght, Barcelona, 1982), he combined sculpture and painting and went back to some of the subjects that he had used previously with Equipo Crónica, especially images from the tradition of painting and the history of Spain, such as Queen Mariana of Austria and “Las Meninas”, interpreted in avant-garde terms. Over the years he developed these series through variations. In 1985 (Maeght) he once again presented motifs of Infantas and also appropriations from works by Picasso and Morandi, together with others that he had made from Goya’s El Perro (The Dog) in 1983. Here he formalised one of his most characteristic features, the use of thick burlap, tar, collage and heavy impastos arranged in collage. In 1985 he was awarded the National Visual Arts Prize. In 1989 he went to live in New York, where he added appropriation of the artistic heritage of the Metropolitan Museum to the appropriations he had already made from the Museo del Prado. The result was an expansion of pictorial motifs, often based on a single figure taken from works by Ribera, Zurbarán, Rubens, Rembrandt or Matisse, and also objects from everyday life, such as gloves, letters or hats. His work was exhibited regularly at the Marlborough Gallery, and in 1996 it was shown at the IVAM.