Manuel Álvarez(1923-2013)

Manuel Álvarez was a key figure in Twentieth Century Argentinean art. Interested in constructive abstraction since his earliest beginnings, he presented his work in National and Municipal salons in the 1940s.

After receiving a scholarship from the French government, Álvarez remained in France in 1954-55. His work was among the highlights at the Asociación Arte Nuevo annual salons of the 1950s, a gathering point for non-figurative artists in the broadest sense of the term. These salons brought together disciplines such as painting and sculpture with architecture and photography. There we found, alongside Manuel Álvarez in painting (the genre to which he devoted his life), Arden Quin, Melé, Verdánega, and Villalba—who had already taken part in the heroic Argentinean avant garde of the 1940s—, as well as Tomasello, Bonevardi, and Jonqueries, who would soon achieve international renown. With them, Álvarez worked in the editorial committee for the Boletín Arte Nuevo journal, which, thanks to the quality of its articles, struck a note of high interest in Argentina on contemporary art debates.

Álvarez participated in the Argentinean delegation to 1956 Venice Biennale and the 1958 São Paulo Biennale.

In his work, he was able to create a domain of almost sacred intensity, where color illuminates form in the same way the sensible illuminates the rational in a unique and fragile balance. This was, thus, a space for the convergence of geometry and mysticism, which used the Golden Ratio in its search for the essential to the exclusion of all contingency.

Manuel Álvarez sustained a lifelong humanistic concern. His series Las ciudades made explicit the conflicts of urban dwellers; the titles of his 1968-1970 series featuring the outline of a human form revealed his preoccupation: El que duda, El que quiere saber. Álvarez's ethical quest culminated in the access to contemplation requested by the figure as a mystical symbol.

In Álvarez's painting, Man agonizes in a dynamic world of forms where perfect calculations, color elaborated within a range devoid of extremes of light or shadows, a supreme bareness, a secret intensity, guide a forward march—from which no evasion is possible—towards a space of reflection where Silence and Poetry accompany us as watchful guardians.

Manuel Álvarez gave a personal, different accent of intensity and intelligence to the realm of non-figurative painting in Argentina.