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拍品專文
The present work, Minna III, by Manolo Valdés, is a vibrant example of the artist’s most celebrated style and serves as a contemporary rendition of an iconic art historical subject. Here, an elegant female subject poses with her face in the palm of her right hand. Throughout his career, Spanish-born Valdés borrowed and reinterpreted imagery and themes from Baroque, avant-garde, Surrealist and modern masters to shape his canvases and sculptures into his own visual language. Minna III dates from a more recent period of Valdés’s oeuvre, in which the artist pays iconographic homage to Picasso, Matisse, Velázquez and Rembrandt. As the artist once noted, “I am just a narrator who comments on the history of painting in various ways, using new materials: it is like a game that consists of changing the code and the key to the artwork…. Many of my colors, materials and textures are the product of relived experiences of other masters. My painting involves much reflection” (M. Valdés, quoted in Manolo Valdés 1981-2006, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2006, p. 20).
Minna III is painted in the scale and proportion of many historic portraits: a single head and only fractions of the upper body are featured, as though the viewer is quite proximate to the subject. Her pose suggests a familiar relationship to the painter, and the proportions implemented are characteristic of Rembrandt and Velázquez’s seventeenth-century portraits and self-portraits, in particular. Minna III, however, features a far more colloquial portrayal of its subject. The present sitter rests her head on her hand; head tilted, she gazes nonchalantly toward lower-left, seemingly at something outside of the picture plane. Constructed of geometric shapes, with vivid blues and yellows, Minna III shines as a vibrant exploration of historic narrative through Valdés’s unique contemporary lens.
Minna III is painted in the scale and proportion of many historic portraits: a single head and only fractions of the upper body are featured, as though the viewer is quite proximate to the subject. Her pose suggests a familiar relationship to the painter, and the proportions implemented are characteristic of Rembrandt and Velázquez’s seventeenth-century portraits and self-portraits, in particular. Minna III, however, features a far more colloquial portrayal of its subject. The present sitter rests her head on her hand; head tilted, she gazes nonchalantly toward lower-left, seemingly at something outside of the picture plane. Constructed of geometric shapes, with vivid blues and yellows, Minna III shines as a vibrant exploration of historic narrative through Valdés’s unique contemporary lens.