Manuel Hernández Mompó

Valencia, 1927 – Madrid, 1992

His father, a painter and drawing teacher, encouraged him in his artistic vocation. Manuel Hernández Mompó began his studies at the Valencia School of Arts and Crafts at the age of thirteen. There he then made the first illustrations of his stories. Three years after the Spanish civil war he entered the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia. Then he meets Javier Calvo, who decisively influences him in his break with academicism. In 1950 he arrives in Paris, where he stayed for about six months. In 1953 he obtained a scholarship to go to Italy to the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.

His painting, of an analytical linear cubism and dark colors, began to transform when he lived in Holland for a year and learned about the work of the Cobra group, whose chromaticism struck him. Later he returned with his family to Madrid in 1957, where he continued to produce mainly works on paper, with gouache or oil. His paintings are populated with small beings, in a true animated microcosm. These characters are schematized until they become abstract signs that, together with color and light, make up his world. In 1963 he spent a summer on the island of Ibiza that would profoundly mark his work. The colors become brighter, and he works with larger formats.

The white backgrounds become an open space where living signs swarm. He was selected for the 1968 Venice Biennale, where he obtained the UNESCO Prize. In recent decades he created a series of paintings on methacrylate, as well as sculptural experiences in painted metal. In 1984 he obtained the National Prize for Plastic Arts. He died in Madrid in 1992.