Manolo Ballesteros

Barcelona, Spain, 1965.

Manolo Ballesteros's lines, created through subtle brushstrokes, create geometrical shapes that gradually take over the canvas, giving rise to capricious forms. Sometimes, these geometrical compositions are the result of the combination of colour planes. The use of colour softens the coldness that these compositions seem to have by default. His art is intuitive, spontaneous and without an implicit message where his creation speaks for itself.

During the last years her work has experimented in the field of abstraction, playing with geometrical complexity through the uniformity of pigments and the reduction of profiles. As a result of these investigations, her most recent work is a reflection of the convergence of rounded shapes in a monochromatic background where the viewer is immersed in an energetic and dynamic art.

The greatest argument with which Manolo Ballesteros's work comes about is the immediate, sovereign and tenacious presence. A presence full of something that calls itself and that from its silence seems to mute the very possibility of interpretation. The paintings of Manolo Ballesteros seem to say nothing more than what there is, the value of the surface of the painting itself, its materiality - and there seems to be no other logical way of talking about them - but as happens in most abstract or non-objective artists, these paintings speak of the concrete at the same time as they gloss over the world, they speak of painting and, therefore, of knowledge, of spirit, of totality.

Extract from the text by Miquel Molins from the catalogue of the exhibition at the Vilacasas Foundation, Barcelona