Individual exhibition of paintings and mixed media – Hall 13
The Ralli Museum Santiago, located in the commune of Vitacura since 1992, boasts hundreds of works in its 18 halls. On this occasion it offers for the first time an individual exhibition of paintings and mixed media by the prominent international artist Manuel Pailós.
Manuel Pailós, painter, ceramist and Uruguayan sculptor, was born in Galicia, Spain in 1918 and died in 2004 in Montevideo, Uruguay, a country to which his family immigrated when he was two years old. From a young age Pailós felt a marked vocation for painting, he studied at the Círculo de Bellas Artes under the guidance of teachers such as Guillermo Laborde and José Cúneo. Then, in 1943, he joined the Torres García Workshop, standing out as a great disciple of the maestro, who strongly influenced his work during the following five decades.
Although Pailós' paintings reflect the aesthetics of Torresgarcian constructivism, they have a recognizable imprint of chromatic refinement, a special design of the constructivist diagrams, the distribution in lockers and the handling of signs. He experimented with multiple materials and techniques, using porous cement, brick dust and earth of different colors that he collected. He also used encaustic, an ancient technique used by the Egyptians to paint funerary portraits in tombs, that consists of applying a hot mixture of wax with pigments on a rigid surface, with a spatula or brush.
In 1996, he won the Figari Prize of the Central Bank of Uruguay. This distinction followed the numerous national and regional awards he received throughout his life. His works can be found in numerous museums in Latin America, North America and Europe as well as in important private collections.
