Journal | JoLMA
Journal issue | 5 | 2 | 2024
Research Article | Scars of Resistance: Manolo Millares's Aesthetics of Negativity
Scars of Resistance: Manolo Millares's Aesthetics of Negativity
Abstract
Manolo Millares emerged as a key figure in Spanish Informalism during the 1950s, a time marked by Francoist censorship and repression. This article examines Millares’s complicated position during Franco’s regime, arguing that his focus on absence and materiality, analyzed through Adorno's negative dialectics, constituted a radical form of aesthetic protest. Millares utilized mixed media to create works that evoked themes of death and violence, yet transcended mere figuration. Millares’s innovative approach, characterized by the use of burlap and incisions on the canvas, challenged traditional aesthetic unity and formalism. By engaging with multiple forms of absence and non-identity, his work resisted subsumption into political or aesthetic narratives.
Submitted: July 23, 2024 | Accepted: Oct. 24, 2024 | Published Dec. 11, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords nonidentity • Adorno • absence • Informalism • mixed-media • Millares
Copyright © 2024 Anda Pleniceanu. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2024/02/005
