Last time, we found Manolo hard at work on a variety of sculptures. Working by hand, he was treating wood, clay, plaster, wire, lead, twine, and cut or torn cardboard, among other materials. These are the “ingredients” required by Manolo in order to realize his projects, transforming in his own imagination the models and sources of inspiration he has discovered and singled out during visits to museums around the world. Intuitively and with impressive certainty, Manolo Valdés masters this enthralling but undoubtedly hazardous tightrope walk through the great works of art of all cultures. To date, he has never felt exposed to the danger of becoming epigonal, of drawing to close to his favorite prototypical images. Before anything else, Manolo’s works are always his own creations, and only then do they narrate another history: that of the great artistic achievements of our civilization and their contents. Guillermo Solana describes this phenomenon very beautifully in terms of a fascination with the so-called »matryoshka«, those Russian wooden dolls which nest one inside the next, each harboring its own a little secret, its surprise – and one always worth finding out. For us, the same is true of Manolo’s works, which we never tire of contemplating, and which always offer opportunities for discovering the unexpected.
Ute Eggeling, Michael Beck, excerpt from the foreword
Artist: Manolo Valdés
Editor: Ute Eggeling, Michael Beck
Text: Guillermo Solana
English, German
Softcover
63 pages, 40 illustrations