|
From a very early age and probably because of his father’s work who was a professor of painting in the school of Valencia cityhall, Manuel Hernández Mompó was combining basic studies and high school with the classes at School of Applied Arts and Artistic Craftmanship of Valencia, which he entered in 1943; he was a companion of Spanish artists who, just like him, were nationally and internationally recognized some years later, for instance Sempere, Genovés, and Vento. In 1948 he was granted a scholarship to paint in Granada in the Painters’ Residence. Three years later another scholarship of three thousand pesetas allowed him to travel to Paris and get in touch with informal painters’ circles that had a great influence on his later paintings; until that time Hernández Mompó focused his attention on the landscape paintings and portraits. Travels were constant in his life, and between 1954 and 1955 he spent some time in Rome where he met his future wife, the Dutchwoman To-Postma, with whom he had two daughters and one son. He was there granted a scholarship by the Department of Culture of the Ministry of National Education to continue his studies in the Academy of Fine Arts in Spain; in 1954 he was awarded prize by Italian Navigation in the International Exhibition de Viareggio. He visited later the informal circles during his stay in Amsterdam and in 1957 he settled down in Aravaca (Madrid). In 1958 he made good use of the scholarship of the Juan March Foundation of Madrid, which was followed by the Gran National Prize for Painting and First Medal for Painting in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. Between 1963 and 1973 he traveled to Ibiza and Madrid; in 1973 he went to the United States, living almost a year in California. On his return to Spain he settled down in Palma de Mallorca in 1974, and four years later in Alaró (Palma de Mallorca). In 1975 he got acquainted with Rafael Alberti in Rome and collaborated with him for the folder Alberti in Spain. Hernández Mompó demonstrated his works in Madrid, Valencia, Granada, Gijón, Rome, Rotterdam and took part in national and international collective exhibitions .Among the most important prizes that he got during his long and prolific career, the Unesco Prize got in the XXXIV Biennial of Venice in 1968 has be mentioned. His initial figurative production was profoundly marked by the experience of the abstract expressionism and the informalism, although his works never lost the reality, for instance his works of figurative imagination and poetics mixed with abstract elements and effects rich in superposition that remind, in part, the best works of Paul Klee.
Manuel Hernández Mompó died in Madrid in 1992.
|
