Manolo Millares

Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Millares was a founding member of El Paso, the group that brought informalism to a Spain still closed under Franco. His work grew out of an early interest in the aboriginal Canarian mummies, and never abandoned that source.

From the late fifties he worked almost exclusively in burlap — torn, stitched, punctured, stretched over frames and painted in black, white and blood red. The material carries the meaning: the works read as wounds, as bandaged bodies, as something excavated. He died in Madrid at forty-five.