Manolo Millares

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1926 – Madrid, 1972

During the Spanish civil war he moved with his family to Lanzarote, where he began to make watercolors of landscapes in the area. Upon his return to Las Palmas he made his first exhibition with them. Felo Monzón introduces him to contemporary art, which Millares will make compatible with his interest in Canarian archaeology, being a regular at the Canary Museum. At the end of the 1940s he became interested in surrealism after reading Breton’s Manifesto. The painting of Miró and Klee especially interests him, inspiring Millares to make his first Pictographs combining the Guanche tradition of cave inscriptions with surrealist painting.

Belonging to a family of intellectuals, Millares participated in various Canarian cultural initiatives such as the magazine “Planas de Poesía” (1949-1951). In contact with the members of the Altamira School, and after holding several exhibitions in the peninsula, Millares decided in 1955 to settle in Madrid.

In 1957 he was a founding member of the El Paso group and exhibited his arpilleras, with which he had worked since 1953, at the Sao Paulo Biennial. In 1958 he participated in the Venice Biennale, thus beginning a period of great international recognition. His arpilleras acquire corporeality and volume, configuring a kind of tortured, torn and broken body that Millares calls Homúnculo. The color, reduced to white, black, and touches of red, accentuates the drama of the image, but starting in 1969, after a trip to the Sahara, his painting lightened and white predominated. His series of Anthropofaunas and Neanderthalios stand out.

He dies in Madrid in 1972, at the age of 46.