Manuel Viola
Manuel Viola
Zaragoza, 1919 - El Escorial, 1987. Spain.
Biography:
Spanish painter. Without having completed 15 years wrote for the magazine Art, one of the best avant-garde publications of Catalonia during the thirties. At this time his works are part of Surrealism, and their poems published in this journal. During the Civil War fighting in the ranks of the POUM and then exiled in France, where he participated with the French Resistance and the clandestine group militates surrealist "La Main à Plume" led by poet Noel Arnaud.
From 1944 he devoted himself intensely to painting, in the context of French plastic, which evolved from Surrealism to abstraction expressionism, especially tachista influenced by Henri Goetz. In 1949 he returned to Spain, and in 1953 the youth of El Paso "invite you to join the group, which had formed the previous year.
From this period dates the consolidation of his style, which reflects the combination of a gestural technique with an obsession for the contrasts of light and shadow, embodied in powerful creep warm colors on white or very dark background, this aesthetic has been associated with Spanish tradition. The last years of his life were spent withdrawn in El Escorial.
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