Manolo Millares, Personaje caído I [Fallen Figure I], 1970, mixed media on burlap © Manolo Millares, VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
Pieza Única is a room dedicated to the temporary display of a single work from the Collections of the Museo Reina Sofía.
On this occasion, to mark the centenary of the birth of Manolo Millares (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1926 - Madrid, 1972), Pieza Única is dedicated to Personaje caído I.
The Museo Reina Sofía holds some thirty works by Millares in its collection, one of the leading representatives of Informalism and a fundamental figure in Spanish painting of the second half of the 20th century, encompassing graphic art, drawings and paintings.
Personaje caído I was made just two years before his untimely death, at the age of 46, when he was achieving great international success. The canvas is an anguished protest with the air of a crucifixion, a dislocated painting with the taut tension of a shroud against a serene red horizon the tone of dried blood. Amid all that violence, white emerges as both mourning and hope. Millares wrote: «I believe my art is a slap in the face of death to justify life».
In the Millares year the Museum also offers an unprecedented look at the artist, allowing his work to be rediscovered through film, with novel approaches to historical memory and performative practice.
Millares made three films in 16mm and Super 8 and appeared as an actor in another film shot by the collector Alberto Portera. From 17 to 19 December, several of his films will be screened, including Millares 1970 (1970), in which he connects the burlap works with the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War; Eros Taro (1969), which traverses the lunar landscape of Lanzarote and César Manrique's houses as a refuge in the midst of Francoist gloom; and Diciembre 68 enero (1968), Super 8 family films that reveal a fascination with the culture of death in Iberian archaeology and offer new readings of his own work.
These films will be digitised in 4K by the Museum, presented for the first time with projection quality, and will be placed in relation within the programme with other films that Millares himself discussed and regarded as influences, such as Morir en Madrid by Frédéric Rossif and El desierto rojo by Michelangelo Antonioni.
© Ministerio de Cultura - Gobierno de España