Manuel Ángeles Ortiz

Jaén (Spain), 1895 – Jaén (Spain), 1984

Born in Jaén, he studied first in Granada with José Larrocha, and at the age of seventeen in Madrid with Cecilio Plá. During those years he maintained a close friendship with Ismael Gómez de la Serna and Federico García Lorca. In 1932 he decided to travel to Paris, where he would be friends with Picasso, Viñes, and other members of the so-called School of Paris. He returned to Spain in 1933, and collaborated with García Lorca in the traveling theater “La Barraca”.

Incorporated into the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals in July 1936, he fought on the Republican side and then fled to France, being rescued from a concentration camp by Picasso. From 1940 to 1949 he lived in Buenos Aires, and then went to Paris, spending time with Picasso in Vallauris. In 1955 he returned to Granada, beginning his Granada series, although he would continue living between this city and Paris. In the eighties, exhibitions of his work were organized in Spain and tributes were paid to him, and in 1981 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts.

He dies in Paris in 1984, and five years later his remains are moved to Granada.