Manolo Millares was one of the key figures in twentieth-century Spanish informalist painting. A self-taught artist, he came from a family of intellectuals. He took an early interest in archaeology and the indigenous culture of his native Canary Islands, regularly visiting the Museum of the Canary Islands in Las Palmas and reading his great-grandfather Agustín Millares Torrés's book Historia General de las Islas Canarias, published in 1882. He developed his fondness for watercolour and drawing in landscapes, figures and self-portraits. He first came to surrealism in the late 1940s, through André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto and the work of Salvador Dalí. This influence was evident in his 1948 'Superrealist Exhibition' at the Museum of the Canary Islands. In 1949 he began writing for the magazine Planas de Poesía, founded by his brothers Agustín and José María with Rafael Roca. In 1950 he first came in contact with the members of the Altamira School. His influences and his early interest in the indigenous art of the Canary Islands led him to co-found LADAC (Los Arqueros del Arte Contemporáneo). His first series, entitled Canary Island Pictographs (1950-1955) dates from this period. It marked the beginning of a move towards more abstract painting, combining the influence of the Neolithic island culture (particularly the Barranco de los Balos cave paintings), with the plastic universe of Joan Miró and Paul Klee. At the same time, he also began to experiment with the textures of different materials, such as sand, stones, shards of pottery, wood and burlap, which he arranged to form collages. In 1955 he moved to Madrid and in 1957 he co-founded the El Paso group, remaining one its most active members until it was wound up three years later. During this time, he evolved towards a more gestural and expressive painting style. He perforated, tore, slashed, stitched, moulded and shaped burlap onto which he then spread, spattered and dripped paint, mostly using black, white and touches of vermilion, offset by the warm tone of the burlap itself to remove all figurative references from the work. In 1969 he travelled to the Sahara. The trip was to leave its mark on his last pieces, in which he evoked the light of the desert and its wildlife in series with recurring titles such as Animal del desierto [Desert Animal] and Antropofauna [Anthropofauna]. The drawings are mainly in Indian ink on paper and combine patches of colour, calligraphy and linear gestures. Millares died prematurely of an incurable disease in Madrid.

Manolo Millares exhibited extensively. His work was shown at the São Paulo Biennial (1957), where he presented his burlap works, and later at the Venice Biennale of 1958, leading to a major international presence from the 1960s on, with shows in galleries in Paris, Frankfurt and New York. His work was shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (1964) and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1971), amongst others. Following his death, retrospectives of his work were staged at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid, 1975); the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1992); the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (Germany, 1992); Atlantic Centre of Modern Art (CAAM) (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1992); Museum of Spanish Abstract Art (Cuenca, 1997); and the Caixa Galicia Foundation (A Coruña, 2006).

Roberto Díaz