Having started out in figuration and landscape, with the aim of making intellectual life in the Canary Islands more dynamic – it had been affected by the Civil War and the Second World War – Manolo Millares (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1926 – Madrid, 1972) published the magazine Planas de Poesía along with his brothers Agustín and José María, both of them poets, between 1948 and 1951, and founded the group Los Arqueros del Arte Contemporáneo (LADAC), a collective which came into being in 1950 and lasted until 1953, organising exhibitions, poetry recitals, etc. and whose members included Elvireta Escobio, whom he would marry in 1953.
In 1955 he moved to Madrid and two years later he founded the El Paso group with Antonio Saura. The members of El Paso were the writers José Ayllón and Manuel Conde and the artists Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito and Manuel Rivera, who were joined later by Manuel Viola and Martin Chirino, among others. This was the most important of the Informalist groups in Spain, remaining active until 1960. According to the definition in their manifesto, “‘El Paso’ is an activity that seeks to create a new state of mind within the Spanish artistic world”.
E.B.
