The eclectic, prolific Spanish painter, sculptor and draughtsman, Manolo Valdes, was born in Valencia, Spain in 1942. He attended the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia and began his career in the 1960s when he joined a group of fellow artists to find the artistic and political collective, Equipo Cronica. The central aim of this fellowship was to harness the power of art – primarily “Pop Art” –- to challenge the suppressive regime of Spanish Dictator General Franco.

The choice of “Pop Art,” in retrospect, makes perfect sense for this group as its artistic guiding light. Its use of exuberant color; tongue-in-cheek teetering between the celebration of, yet also mocking of Western commercialism- and its overarching humor, were the perfect artistic antidote to the drab (real and metaphorical) zeitgeist of Franco’s colorless, humorless Spain.

Valdes and his compatriots bravely challenged the iron-grip of fear that the dictator had imposed on their native home, a country celebrated for hundreds of years as a cultural mecca, a Mediterranean idyll, and a place that had produced some of the world’s greatest artists. From operating in a unique locale, where freedom of expression was valued, not curtailed.
A multi-talented artist, Valdes is now considered one of the leading Spanish modern artists in the world and has been honored with a myriad of awards and high-profile exhibitions including xxx