MANUEL BARBADILLO (Cazalla de la Sierra, Seville, 1929 - Malaga, 2003). Untitled, 1979- 1984. Ink on paper. Framed in museum glass. Signed in the lower right corner. Measurements: 21 x 30 cm; 29 x 38 cm (frame). On the graph paper there is a study, reflections of the artist, which shows us the previous and conceptual work. In fact, in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, there are several pieces of larger dimensions that reflect the aesthetic concept that the artist embodies in this work. Examples of this are the pieces Coraina, Dione and Merata. Manuel Barbadillo began his training in the studio of José Arpa (1941), and later moved to the workshop of sculptor Emilio García Ortiz, where he remained between 1944 and 1947. He finally completed his training at the School of Arts and Crafts between 1951 and 1953. At the same time he studied law, and when he finished his studies in 1954 he exhibited for the first time at the Ateneo de Sevilla. He then traveled to Morocco, where he remained until 1957, and there he definitively left figuration behind to focus on abstract experimentation. When in 1959 he moved to New York, where he remained until 1962, his work was framed in the informalist abstraction, at first showing influences of abstract expressionism. However, his language will soon derive in the line of the reduction of color, until deriving in sober, monochrome works, dense in pictorial matter and of an accentuated experimental character. Towards 1960 his work enters a new stage, marked by structuring and the search for an increasingly rational and balanced language. Finally, around 1963 his painting reached maturity through compositional schematization, the elimination of matter, symmetry and the use of repetitive forms. This simplification will finally lead him to the binary language, and from 1964 he replaces the concept of form with that of module, thus beginning the longest and most fruitful period of his production. In 1968 he was invited to participate in a course at the Centro de Cálculo de la Complutense, and that same year he took part in the Seminar on Automatic Generation of Plastic Forms at the same center, something that would be key in his career. Since then Barbadillo will establish a close relationship with the computer, understood as a working tool. Throughout his career, Barbadillo has been a member of the Computer Arts Society and the Artistic Council of the Gesellschaft für Computer Grafik und Computer Kunst in Munich, and has shown his work in exhibitions held in Spain, Morocco, Argentina, Venezuela, the United States and Germany, as well as participating in group exhibitions around the world. He is currently represented in the MNCA Reina Sofía, in the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo and in numerous public and private collections in Europe and America. Framed in museum glass.