Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Wednesday, July 31st, 2024. New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and London’s Tate Gallery are undoubtedly two of contemporary art’s western meccas. When it comes to paintings, their walls display the most representative and striking works from recent art and from the avant-gardes. Works on which it is not uncommon to see the signature of artists who have reformulated the concepts or work and creativity in a modern context, and who have redefined their own discipline. One of those chosen names is that of Manolo Millares, for whom retrospectives are regularly organised in the major museums and galleries of the cities which set the trends, such as the Big Apple, Paris, London, or Madrid (the Reina Sofía has a significant “Millares collection”).

Manuel Millares Sall was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1926, and died in Madrid in 1972. It would be difficult to argue that his own family background was not one of the major factors conditioning the awakening of his artistic vocation. The Millares family, without a doubt, have had a prominent role for generations as a result of their advances in research and creativity, with constant talent feedback taking place at home. Manolo was the sixth child of Juan Millares Carló, the poet and university lecturer, and of Dolores Sall Bravo de Laguna, with such outstanding relatives in his background as the historian Agustín Millares Torres, the writers Agustín and Luis Millares Cubas, and the palaeographer, bibliographer and academic, Agustín Millares Carló. How was he not going to become interested in artistic matters from an early age?

This was what happened to Millares the painter, who studied landscape painting in the city of his birth, flirted with surrealism and ended up constructing a completely contemporary personal style which broke all the rules, capable of reshaping the identity of the Canarian natives into the most modern expression of the islander’s creativity.

The Museo Canario played an important role in his education, with young people such as the sculptor Martin Chirino and himself visiting the collection of aboriginal art, and being amazed by the pintaderas (painted ceramic pieces), the iconography of the first inhabitants of the Islands and those mummies of their corpses, wrapped in the roughness of worn materials and cloth. Both these artists took good mental note of all that imaginarium, as can be seen if you look through the work of these two contemporary geniuses, natives of this city.

As far as Manolo Millares’s production is concerned, his output comprises over five hundred works. Most of these are canvases, although there are also some artefacts and mediums to which his visions also spread. After some early exhibitions in the Gran Canaria capital’s Círculo Mercantil and in the Museo Canario itself, Millares finally found his personal style. From 1950 onwards he began to put his signature to works where abstract forms were enmeshed with calligraphy and, in particular, with work in relief.

The sackcloth works are, in reality, the most recognisable distinctive trait of Millares’s legacy. Shapes and lines which emulate those wrappings of the aboriginal mummies, which stand out from the pictures, worked in sand and wood, and which achieve the texture of the sacks of potatoes which have been so representative of the development of the island economy during the 20th century.

The appeal of the painter reached the viewer, but not without controversy. Not without his works being argued over. And not without his work becoming a feature of international showcases, once it had taken the path from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to Madrid. Millares lived and worked in the capital of Spain, alongside his wife, the painter and writer, and later curator of his work, Elvireta Escobio. Another remarkable sentient figure who was beside the artist throughout his evolution.

His legacy grew and grew once the LADAC artistic group became active in the city of his birth. LADAC (Los Arqueros del Arte Contemporáneo – The Archers of Contemporary Art – comprised, as well as Millares, Placido Fleitas, Juan Ismael, José Julio, Alberto Manrique, Felo Monzón and Elvireta Escobio herself). Or once he became an outstanding member in Madrid of the El Paso group, originally formed by the painters Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito, Juana Francés, Manuel Rivera, Antonio Suárez, Antonio Saura and Millares himself, as well as the sculptor Pablo Serrano. There is no question that El Paso was one of the most significant influences on the direction of new art in Spain after the post-war era.

Manolo Millares’s oeuvre is now spread all over the world. Along with the museums and galleries, and artistic institutions, we must add thirty-odd private collections, which do not tend to display these works, signed by one of the most outstanding artists of the 20th century avant-gardes. It should be said that on the island of his birth, his production continues to be accessible and well cared for.

In the City Hall buildings in Santa Ana Square, in its Assembly Rooms, various of the works of Millares belonging to the city are on show on the walls. Among these are Despojo abisal (Abyssal Plunder) (1967) and six further works without title, dated 1961, 1965, 1968 and 1971. The famous sackcloth pieces are there. As well as this, the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria owns an untitled abstract painting by the painter, which is known as La procesión, (The Procession) and which dates from the 1960s. And the abstract collage El personaje, (The Character) from 1966.

The Museo Canario and the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) have also taken good care of Millares’ work. Both institutions scheduled monographic exhibitions to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death (he died on August 14th, 1972). The CAAM has also made a great effort to recover various works by the painter, this always being one of the main goals in its acquisitions policy. Beyond the art exhibition rooms, the city has dedicated a park to his memory in the Vega de San José quarter, and monuments, such as the bust to be seen in that same park, by Miguel Alonso Muñoz (1993). Although Manolo Millares will always be, in his own right, one of those artists you can never forget.

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