Manolo Valdés was born in Valencia in 1942 and is one of the most well-known modern Spanish painters, sculptors, and draughtsmen Beginning his training as a painter at the age of 15, he eventually enrolled at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia, in Spain, in1964 During his time there, he came upon the works of Pierre Soulages and Robert Rauschenberg It was then that he discovered that the artist didn't necessarily require a paintbrush to paint

He went on to start his career in the 1960s as a founding member of Equipo Cronica, a group of artists who used Pop Art as inspiration to oppose both the History of Art and the Franco regime in Spain The group dissolved in 1981 as they witnessed the advent of democracy, and Valdes slowly took out political messaging from his work He continued his artistic investigation focusing on the appropriation and reworking of his art He now splits his time between New York City and Madrid, Spain, where he currently resides and works

Manolo Valdés has created a distinctive style that analyses history without deviating from the main topic By removing the figures from their original context, Valdés revitalises these well-known images from well-known works of art by twentieth-century masters like Matisse, Picasso, and Lichtenstein, as well as old masters like Velázquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Fra Angelico He exaggerates the scale of the body, abstracts form, minimises detail, and uses a lot of sloppy paint application and strange materials in both paintings and sculptures

His inspirations come from visiting museums, observing paintings and even real-life objects in a way they have been interpreted through art He says, “I like sunflowers because Van Gogh painted them, and I only like apples if they look like Cezanne’s apples! I might even like a person more if they look like a painting that I’ve seen and like It really is just painting in general that influences me” He is also k