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https://www.coleccionbbva.com/es/autor/salinas-manuel/
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autor
14513
Manuel Salinas
(Seville, 1940 - 2020)
Author's artworks
20th-21st Century. Spanish
Manuel Salinas’s practice cannot be readily pigeonholed in any single art movement. His work is underwritten by a highly personal aesthetic which is the outcome of his ongoing and measured quest, unshackled from prevailing fashions and trends.
With the passing of time Salinas’ practice has undergone an interesting process of transformation. This self-taught artist began his career with a series of works inspired by the subject matter of the garden, with the composition organised geometrically. From there he evolved towards a gestural brand of painting with a lyrical leaning, whose apparent chaos is always ruled by a thoroughly meditated internal order.
Salinas’ earliest works show the artist’s interest in architecture: they are governed by the order and balance of architectural constructions. They are built using large masses of colour with the powerful presence of certain types of geometric shapes.
Little by little, his work evolved towards gestural Expressionism, leaving behind any figurative reference. Forms vanish to give rise to a whirlwind of brushstrokes and colour. Technically speaking, his painting from those yeas was influenced by the
action painting
Emerging in the USA in the 1950s, this art movement may be ascribed within twentieth century American
Abstract Expressionism
This contemporary painting movement emerged within the field of abstraction in the 1940s in the United States, from where it spread worldwide. Rooted in similar premises and postulates as Surrealism, the Abstract Expressionist artists regarded the act of painting as a spontaneous and unconscious activity, a dynamic bodily action divested of any kind of prior planning. The works belonging to this movement are defined by the use of pure, vibrant primary colours that convey a profound sense of freedom. The movement’s main pioneers were, among others, Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) and Hans Hoffman (1880-1966). Leading Spanish exponents of the movement are Esteban Vicente (1903-2001) and José Guerrero (1914-1991), who lived for some time in New York City, where they were in first-hand contact with the many artistic innovations taking place there around that time.
, although it would later be adopted and reinterpreted by European artists. The term was coined in New York in the essay
The American Action Painters
by Harold Rosenberg, published in 1952 in the magazine Art News. The text talked about a new movement which laid the emphasis on the very act of painting and understood the final result as a consequence of that act although not as the pursued end. Action Painting works are defined by an extremely powerful use of colour and by the gesturality characterising the application of the paint on the surface of the canvas. Its major representatives in the US are Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997).
practiced by American artists, using
dripping
in art, dripping or drip painting is a technique of applying paint by pouring or dripping it directly on the canvas, generally lying horizontally on the ground. This technique is usually associated with action painting, a term coined by Harold Rosenberg in 1952 to describe the work of Jackson Pollock.
as a form of applying colour. Having said that, his palette captures and reflects the intense light of his native Seville.
Towards the late-1980s, vertical bands began to appear in his paintings and would go on to become a major component in the composition. With their resounding materiality, these bands seem to vibrate against the monochrome background, just like the energetic areas of colour of the large-format paintings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970).
Stimulated by his desire to turn Seville into one of the capitals of Spanish avant-garde art, in 1974 he promoted the creation of
Centro de Arte M-11
a cutting-edge art centre in Seville founded with the mission to turn the city into Spain’s third most important contemporary art centre.
. In 2016 he was awarded the city’s Gold Medal and was appointed a member of the Santa Isabel de Hungría Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
Works by Salinas may be found in the collections of, among others, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Banco de España in Madrid, and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville.