MANUEL SALINAS MILÁ (Seville, 1940- 2021).Untitled.Oil on canvas.Provenance: Galería Alfredo Viñal (Málaga).Signed in the lower left corner.Measurements: 161.5 x 121.5 cm; 166 x 134 cm (frame).A work of abstract aesthetics, where the author has used a pictorial language of open style, whose basic characteristic is the conception of the pictorial surface as a whole, as an open field, without limits and without hierarchy. Thus, as we see here, the pictorial forms, the fruit of experimentation, pure stain and gestural brushstrokes, are not limited to a composition but go beyond it, indicating to the spectator that they are forms, ideas or suggestions that go beyond the frontiers of the purely pictorial.A self-taught painter, Manuel Salinas is one of the leading representatives of Spanish abstraction in the last twenty-five years. From the outset he belonged to the group of artists who promoted the M-11 Art Centre, located in the house where Velázquez was born in Seville. His first works are figurative and are framed within realism, but thanks to the influence of the American expressionists he finally evolved towards abstraction, towards what he ironically called "strict abstract". Salinas moved within Informalism, in a style in which form is of little value, with colour creating the plastic effects on the canvas. However, in spite of the stain, the vibrant line and the firm gestures, there is in Salinas a permanent yearning for order and balance, an inclination towards the geometrical which is no more than the visual reflection of his conception of the world and nature. His first exhibition dates from 1962, and from then on he exhibited his work in the main Spanish cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville and Granada, as well as abroad: Lisbon, Casablanca, Bogotá, Lund (Sweden), New York, St. Louis (USA), Belgrade, Anglet (France), Thessaloniki (Greece), Sofia and Mexico City. In 2003 he was the subject of two retrospectives, one in Seville, organised by the Caja San Fernando, and another travelling around Europe, with Sofia as the starting point, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Manuel Salinas has works in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Fundación La Caixa, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, the Museums of Contemporary Art of Valladolid, Madrid and Tenerife, the Museo Vázquez Díaz and in the collections of the Banco de España, Olivetti, Argentaria, Endesa, BBV and Avianca (Barranquilla, Colombia). The artist also owns two works included in the book by the critic Francisco Calvo Serraller "Las cien mejores obras del siglo XX" (Madrid; TF and Sociedad Estatal España Nuevo Milenio, 2001).