Manolo Millares

(Spanish, 1926–1972)

Manolo Millares was a Spanish artist best known for his abstract assemblages and paintings. His affinity for burlap, sand, and wood, along with an improvisational painting technique, associated him with Art Informel artist Antoni Tàpies and Arte Povera artist Alberto Burri. Millares’ works also reflect the innovative linear properties of his fellow Spaniard, the Surrealist artist Joan Miró. Born on January 17, 1926 in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, the artist was largely self-taught and painted mostly watercolors of landscapes before moving to Madrid in 1953. Along with the artists Antonio Saura, Rafael Canogar, and Luis Feito López, Millares helped found the El Paso group in the mid-1950s with the aim to innovate and renew the Spanish painting tradition. Millares gained an international reputation by the early 1960s, at which point he incorporated pictograph-like semblances of human figures in his paintings. The artist died on August 14, 1972 in Madrid, Spain. His works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.