Manolo Millares

Manuel Millares Sall, known as Manolo Millares (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1926 - Madrid, 1972), was a Spanish painter and printmaker who played a prominent role in abstract art in postwar Spain. He co-founded the El Paso group in 1957 and is best remembered for his works on burlap, where black and white paint combine with material elements and sewn volumes.

He began in the Canary Islands, where his family settled in Arrecife and later in Gran Canaria after the Civil War. His early work comprised landscapes, figures and self-portraits with a Van Gogh-like feel. Around 1949 he turned to abstraction, passing through a surrealist phase and a study of Canarian Aboriginal culture that produced the Pictografías series.

In 1950 he drove the founding of LADAC (Los Arqueros del Arte Contemporáneo), and in 1951 he showed Aborigen Nº 1 at the First Hispano-American Art Biennial in Madrid, a work critics regarded as one of the leading achievements of Spanish abstraction. His Muros of 1955 and 1956 led him to pierce his canvases and discover burlap, which became his characteristic support.

His legacy lies in linking Spanish abstraction with material and local tradition. His role in El Paso places him among the key figures of Spanish Informalism.