MANOLO MILLARES
April 18 – June 2, 2006

The iconoclastic founder of the Spanish avant-garde movement “El Paso”, MANOLO MILLARES, died in 1974 at the age of 48 and his last solo exhibition in New York, at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, was held that year. On April 18th 2006 Acquavella Galleries will open a comprehensive exhibition of paintings, collages and drawings by MILLARES covering his crucially inventive years 1957-1963.

Celebrated by New York poet, critic and curator Frank O’Hara in his widely acclaimed “New Spanish Painting & Sculpture” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1960, MILLARES subverted the very essence of easel painting with a uniquely Spanish sense of dramatic existentialism at the same time that American artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were giving new meanings to the basic materials of art. With predominantly black, white and red canvas ripped, torn and wrapped around naked stretchers MILLARES confronted the dark history of Spain’s recent past and paved the way for an entirely new visual language, one that echoes throughout contemporary American art, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Julian Schnabel.

The exhibition continues through June 2nd. The gallery will be open Monday through Saturday, 10-5 pm. For further information please contact Eleanor Acquavella Dejoux (212) 734 6300.