Manuel RIVERA

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Status, price and estimation of the artist Manuel RIVERA

Price of a painting by Rivera: €2,000 – 90,000

Estimate for a drawing or watercolour by the artist at auction: 500 – 3,000€.

Estimate for a sculpture: 50 – 400€.

If you wish to have a painting by Rivera appraised, our painting experts are at your disposal for a free valuation.

Painting as a vocation

Manuel Rivera was a Spanish painter born in Granada, Spain, in 1627 and died in 1995.

From an early age, Manuel Rivera took courses in applied art, learning to paint nudes in the art centre in his native Granada.

He then attended the art and craft school of Joaquin Capulino, and later that of Gabriel Morcillo Raya, two figurative painters active in Granada. Both encouraged Rivera to apply for admission to the Seville School of Fine Arts, where he painted mainly landscapes.

An experimental work

From 1951, Rivera moved to Madrid where he experimented with his first abstract paintings. There he founded the experimental group El Paso in 1957, a group that would later exert a major influence on the arts in Spain and throughout the world.

In 1953, Rivera began to incorporate metal materials into his compositions, always with an experimental aim. These “metal canvases” were made up of iron wire, barbed wire and grids, all stretched over the canvas with the help of metal hangers. Light, the play of transparency, the presence and absence of contours are the main threads of his production.

In 1960, the paintings became less austere, as they were more colourful and focused on optical and kinetic effects.

Finally, in the 1970s, Rivera’s work, although still abstract, seems to focus on the relationship with the organic. The artist works with various materials that allow a plastic and visual link to be made with the skin or viscera.

Between painting and sculpture

Rivera’s various experiments are therefore intended to be as disconcerting for the viewer’s visual experience as they are for any classification of his work. Between sculpture and painting, the artist never ceases to surprise, transgressing both genres and classifications.

Among his most famous works are Albaicines (1951), a series that marks his debut in abstraction, Metamorphoses (1958), a work produced in the year in which the artist abandoned traditional pictorial supports for metal canvas, and Mirrors (1967-68), a series in which the artist experimented with rice paper.

Manuel Rivera’s prolific work is well represented on the art market today, with prices varying from one work to another, but often remaining around 30,000 euros. Examples include Mutant Mirror No. 5, which sold for €25,987 (Christie’s, London, 29 June 2011) and Méthamorphosis (Navidad), which sold for €31,491 (Christie’s, New York, 28 September 2017).

It should be noted that Espeso para una catedral is the work that won the artist’s record at auction, with a hammer price of 139,167 euros at Christie’s in London on 7 February 2008.

Appraise and sell a painting by Manuel Rivera

If you own a Manuel Rivera painting or any other sculpture, ask for a free estimate via our online form.

You will then be contacted by a member of our team of experts and auctioneers to give you an independent view of the market price of your painting. In the event of a sale, our specialists will also advise you on the various options available to sell your work at the best price.