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MANOLO MILLARESEastern and Western Grief September 9 to November 9, 2003Reception: Tuesday, September 9, 6 - 8 PM Documentary video on display MANOLO MILLARES: MOURNING OF EAST AND WESTby Eva Millares The work of Millares uncovers, layer by layer, a chilling archaeological excavation of human suffering and absurdity. From his childhood in the Canary Isles to his departure in 1955 for Madrid, where he settled definitively, this painter of truths investigated and dissected humankind in search of an answer that would relieve his existential anguish. This sense of tragedy, veiled in his early period by a magical surrealism charged with prehistoric symbolism, burst out in the late 50s in his dark works on torn sackcloth. Reflecting the prototypical España negra, the ripped and re-sewn sackcloths speak of a need often referred to by the artist to destroy so that, through "a radiant wound of health," something better may be built. They are manifestations, in his words, "of an art of explosion and protest, of a passionate means of expression that destroys itself so as to rebuild itself ipso facto from its ruins." The Homunculi, the ragged and bloody monsters that appeared in 1960, seemed not to relieve the pain of this search. With the meticulousness of a scientist who knows he is close to solving a problem, Millares painted in an increasingly intense and dramatic manner. It was at this time, especially in the early 70s, that his paintings began to be taken over by white. A terrible white that remained with him, like an unanswered question, until the end of his days. This exhibition brings together 40 works, on sackcloth and paper, produced by Manolo Millares between the late 60s and his premature death in 1972. They are therefore mature pieces, Millares’s most distinctive work. They are also works that, as mentioned above, show an increasing tendency towards white and the use of graphic characters.
Taken together, they offer us a summary of the iconography of monsters that the painter devised to represent humankind: Homunculi, Neanderthals, Anthropofauna, re-sewn beings depicted in their own misery, denouncing the outrages of this world. These could not fail to be accompanied by a few of Millares’s imaginary "Animals of the desert," which emerged following his trip to the western Sahara in 1969. At the same time, the selection of Indian ink drawings gives us an interesting opportunity to encounter the late Millares — art that had become pure expressive gesture, paintings of bare forms on white, of nervous, indecipherable brushstrokes incarnating strange creatures or enigmatic writings that call to mind the Holy Office. These are messages sent by Millares at the most dramatic point of his artistic career. Just as death was stalking him, they were his last burst of artistic creation, a scorched desert, the devastating white of mourning in the East.
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