Issue date: 18 Jul, 2012
This series devoted to contemporary art depicts paintings and sculptures by Manolo Valdés in a souvenir sheet with four stamps.
Manolo Valdés was born in Valencia in 1942 and began his artistic training at the School of Fine Arts in Valencia in 1957 which he left two years later to devote himself to painting. He soon showed his creative talent and teamed up with other artists of the time defending the new role of art in Spain. In 1964 he founded Equipo Crónica with Rafael Solbes and Juan Antonio Toledo and although the latter soon left the group, the Equipo Crónica lived on until the death of Rafael Solbes in 1981. The group used the team’s name rather than the individual ones and cultivated a figurative painting in the pop art trend.
From 1981 on he begins his solo career and explores a new style drifting apart from the previous period of Equipo Crónica, but making use of his background and experience. In 1989 he moves to New York and experiments with new forms of expression which represent a definite change in his career.
Manolo Valdés has the great master painters such as Goya, Velázquez and Zurbarán, as a reference for many of his works as well as the avant-garde Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Miro. He uses different materials and textures such as hessian, linen, canvas, and sewed up torn fabrics to paint on them his colourful works.
As a sculptor he has worked with all kinds of materials: bronze, wood, alabaster, marble, lead, zinc and glass. He has created big paintings for public spaces such as the Lady of Elche, more than twenty metres high, exhibited in Valencia, the Infanta Margarita, seven meters high in Alcobendas (Madrid) or the Lady of the Manzanares, thirteen meters high, in Madrid. He is well known for his unique Meninas collection, which has been showed as a pop up exhibition in the streets of Valladolid, Seville, Salamanca or Madrid, and for the heads of women in hats.
The artist currently lives between New York and Madrid.
The stamps depict two oils on hessian: Profile with blue background and Vivianne III, and two sculptures: a marble version of the Infanta Margarita, 1995, and a wooden version of Queen Mariana, 1982.
Rate A - €0.75. For a “standard” letter or postcard within Spain, up to 20 g.
Rate A2 - €0.85. For a “standard” letter or postcard within Spain, between 20 g and 50 g.
Rate B - €1.65. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to Europe (including Greenland), up to 20 g.
Rate C - €1.75. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to the rest of the world (except USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand), up to 20 g.
Rate D - €2.10. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, up to 20 g.