Manuel Angeles Ortiz (Jaén, 1895 - Paris, 1984). "Albaicín". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower margin.

Lot description

MANUEL ANGELES ORTIZ (Jaén, 1895 - Paris, 1984). "Albaicín". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower margin. The canvas has sagging (see additional image). Attached certificate issued by the artist's granddaughter, Lina Davidov. Measurements: 60 x 78 cm; 64 x 82 cm (frame). This work is part of the emblematic series and motifs that Ortiz worked on Granada (Albaicín, Paseo de cipreses, Alhambra), where the city is approached through constructive schemes and a poetics of repetition. His interest in simplifying the form to almost archetypal elements (window, house, head...) appear here transformed into modules that are concatenated and broken. Representative of the Spanish School of Paris, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz began his training in Granada, in the studio of José Larrocha. He later completed his studies at the Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales in the city, and then moved to Madrid, where he continued his training in the studio of Cecilio Plá. In 1915 he made his debut in a collective exhibition, receiving very good reviews in the local press. At the beginning of the twenties he moves to Paris, where he will have in Picasso his main support and first enthusiast. There he had his first individual exhibition, held at the Quatre Chemins gallery in 1926. In 1932 he returned to Spain, but his anti-fascist stance led him to go first to Paris and then to Buenos Aires, where he was fully integrated into the artistic environment and lived until 1948, when he returned to Paris for good. He is currently represented in the Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid, the ARTIUM in Vitoria, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Contemporary Art Museum in Seville, the Fine Arts Museum in Grenoble, the Federico García Lorca, Mapfre and Telefónica Foundations and the Bargera Gallery in Cologne, among other public and private collections.