Exhibition

Manuel Franquelo. The Language of Things

Manuel Franquelo. The Language of Things

From June 12 to October 12, 2026

Leaflets: Folleto "Manuel Franquelo. El lenguaje de las cosas" SEE

Further information:

Manuel Franquelo (Málaga, 1953–Madrid, 2024) was an unclassifiable and unique artist. He created a realistic universe so personal, everyday and unassuming that his output (which was furthermore scarce due to the slowness of his working process, painstaking to an obsessive degree) belongs on the fringes of art history, alongside some of the greatest artists — oblivious to trends, markets and distractions of any kind, voluntary recluses in a world of their own where all that exists are they and their brushes, pencils or engraving tools, suspended in a time rendered eternal by their works.


Espacio ArteSonado

Organised by the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga in collaboration with the artist’s family as a small-scale tribute from his native city, this intimate, delicate and minimalist exhibition offers a fleeting glimpse of a little of the greatness of Franquelo’s art. The series of fourteen prints entitled The Language of Things and the two photographic prints based on the motifs featured in them not only illustrate this solitary, almost monastically ascetic and experimental work (which won him the National Printmaking Prize in 1998); they also show snippets of his studio and the insignificant objects he hoarded haphazardly and circumstantially, and with which he shaped a microcosm resembling that of a collector of moments.

Two drawings of urban landscapes of Madrid, his adoptive city, likewise illustrate how, for Franquelo, the world outside his studio doors was yet another accumulation of inert objects and forms organised in space, which could be arranged into another still life in silence and calm. And everything is executed in a breathtakingly meticulous technique that challenges the eye, pushing it to its limits.

 

Manuel Franquelo, Still Life with Bird, 2003
Platinum palladium photographic print on paper, 62 x 57 cm.
Courtesy of the artist. © Manuel Franquelo, VEGAP, Málaga, 2026.

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