Manolo Valdés *

(born in Valencia, Spain in 1942)
Fernando VII, II, 1985, oil on canvas, 100.5 x 81 cm, framed
We thank the Manolo Valdés Studio, New York for their kind assistance with cataloguing this work.

Provenance:
Galeria Maeght, Barcelona, with no. B 4159 (label)
Private Collection
Galeria Charo de Frutos, Madrid
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1993)
Sale, Christie’s, London, October 15, 2011, lot 306
Corporate Collection, Germany (acquired at the above sale)

For Manolo Valdés, figuration as an aesthetic category constitutes the very foundation of his practice. Employing a figurative language that bears certain affinities with Pop Art, he places particular emphasis on clarity and reduction of form, using a highly tactile painterly manner in order to establish a relationship with the viewer that is at once immediate and subtle.

Valdés combines Pop Art with historical allusion. His monumental sculptures and richly structured canvases interrogate traditional forms while paying homage to iconic figures in the history of art. Thematically, he engages with the work of the great masters, having studied the oeuvre of classical painters such as Rubens, Rembrandt and van Eyck, as well as that of avant-garde artists such as Bonnard and Matisse, alongside contemporary Spanish artists, American Pop artists and German Expressionists.

It is unmistakable that Valdés never conceals his sources – quite the contrary. He foregrounds them deliberately and incorporates them into the titles of his works: pre-texts, models, inspirations. Valdés speaks openly of his points of departure, reconsiders them, and reinterprets them in order ultimately to articulate a wholly personal vision of the chosen pre-text: “My starting point might be something from Velázquez, for example. Then, from that painting, I pick a fragment. Generally, it’s a head. Between when that head was created in the 17th century and now, so many things have happened in art history: material paintings, abstraction, Pop art… What did Pop art teach us? It taught us large scale. So when I look at and reread that image from the 17th century, I can’t stop thinking and block out everything that’s happened in art history between then and now. Everything that’s happened becomes a tool with which to reinterpret the original image.” (Manolo Valdés, Interview, Manolo Valdés: ‘I only like apples if they look like Cézanne’s apples!’, in studio international, June 21, 2016)

In the present example, the point of reference is the portrait Fernando VII, painted in 1815 by Francisco de Goya and now at the Prado in Barcelona. Whether one ultimately chooses to recognise in it Ferdinand VII, a monarch associated with an absolutist style of rule in the early nineteenth century, or whether the elongated sideburns instead evoke more contemporary, pop-cultural reminiscences of Elvis Presley, the ‘King of Rock ’n’ Roll’, remains open to the viewer’s imagination.