Manuel Hernández Mompó

MANUEL HERNÁNDEZ MOMPÓ (Valencia, 1927 - Madrid, 1992).
Untitled, 1961.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
It presents slight stains.
Measurements: 24 x 17 cm; 54 x 47 cm (frame).

Although the work we are now bidding has been done in black and white, Manuel Hernández Mompó was the creator of a Mediterranean and luminous work. In his production he captured a figurative and poetic imagery, harmoniously mixed with abstract elements and rich superimposition effects. He installed signs, in the form of scenes, or rather fragments or echoes of scenes, suggestions of things that happened or, at that time, were happening. Many of these suggestions had to do with Mompó's movement of signs, which seemed to come and go from white to white, not overlapping each other but appearing and disappearing from his canvases.

The son of a painting teacher, Hernández Mompó alternated his basic and high school studies with classes at the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas y Oficios Artísticos in Valencia, which he entered in 1943. In 1948 he obtained a scholarship to paint in Granada, in the Residence for Painters, and three years later a new pension allowed him to travel to Paris. In the French capital he came into contact with the circles of informalist painters, whose influence would mark his later production, definitively leaving behind the landscapes and portraits that had dominated his work until then. Between 1954 and 1955 he spent a long period in Rome, on a grant from the Department of Culture of the Ministry of National Education to study at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in the Italian capital. In 1954 he participated in the International Exhibition of Viareggio, where he was awarded the Italian Navigation Prize. He left Italy and settled in Amsterdam, where he again frequented the informalist cenacles. In 1957 he returned to Spain and settled in Aravaca (Madrid). The following year he was awarded a grant from the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, and won the Grand National Prize for Painting and a first medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. During the sixties and seventies he alternated his residence between Madrid, Ibiza, and in 1973 he spent a year in California. On his return to Spain he settled in Mallorca. Hernández Mompó exhibited in the main capitals of Europe and the United States, and participated in national and foreign collective exhibitions. Among his most outstanding awards was the Unesco Prize received at the XXXIV Venice Biennial in 1968. In 1984 he was awarded the National Prize of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture. His youthful style was soon influenced in a definitive way by abstract expressionism and informalism, although his works never lost reality as a reference. Hernández Mompó is represented at the IVAM in Valencia, the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía.