Endowed with an intense lyrical quality, these two excellent pieces by Rivera are at the same time dramatic and disquieting quasi-architectural constructions. In both cases, the board is used as a support for the metal mesh fabric, which is suspended from it by iron pivots.

Manuel Rivera, a pioneer of Spanish abstract art, began studying in his hometown of Granada, which inspired in him a taste for light that runs throughout his whole body of work. He furthered his training in Seville and finally in Madrid, where he took part, in 1957, in the creation of El Paso, the seminal Informalismo group, of which he was a member until it dismembered in 1960.

Very soon, he forged a highly personal style that had nothing to do with his initial figurative leanings. Using metal mesh fabrics he created profound and spiritual pieces akin to certain strands of Op ArtandKinetic Art, thanks to the optical vibration that the meshes create in the beholder. In these works Rivera not only looked for a balance of forms and colour, but went a step further in a search for an emotional state.

As the artist himself recalled, his fortuitous encounter with the metal mesh fabric took place in 1956 in front of the window of a hardware store: “I bought a roll of the metal mesh fabric and took it back to the studio. I spent several days observing it until I began working with it almost blindly. That was the starting point of my adventure.” The material disclosed its aesthetic potential to Rivera and offered him the possibility of using a personal vocabulary that allowed him to come up with answers to his concerns about space and light, which he translated into transparencies and volumes. The metal mesh fabric was for Rivera what burlap was for Millares.

Initially his works were like collages on just one single plane. However, he soon started to leave space between the fragments of metal mesh, thus adding a depth that enabled him to play with vibrations and iridisations derived from the material itself.

After the 1958 Venice Biennale the metal mesh of his works began to rust. That fortuitous accident encouraged him to incorporate colour in the early 1960s. Colour would gradually win out over the shadows and instil a greater intensity and brightness into the works.

The artist began to use the same system of glazings employed by Venetian painters in the 16th century. The incorporation of colour in the background meant that the light created highly intense waves and vibrations, something that, coupled with the superimposition of metal mesh, provided the work with a more constructivist tone.

1964 saw the birth of his celebrated Espejos, his series of mirrors,that would go on to occupy almost three decades in his practice. These are magical spaces, full of emotion, movement and colour. Rivera’s interest in mirrors had, as he himself admitted, much to do with the work of Lewis Carroll. Through them, the artist pursued a sense of mystery, a forbidden and intriguing world.