Scenes from a Different Island

Artist Manolo Millares was known for dark paintings on torn sackcloth that captured the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War and the postwar years. His ripped and resewn works reflected an existential anguish that spoke of a need to destroy so that, through “a radiant wound of health,” something better might rise from the ruins. In his later years, the ragged and bloody monsters that populated his work gave way to terrible expanses of white that remained with him until his death at age 46 in 1972.

Tonight at 7 at Centro Cultural Español, the artist’s early life in the Canary Islands comes to the screen in The Accounting Ledgers of Manolo Millares, a film adapted from notebooks the artist filled with memories of one of Spain’s most tumultuous epochs. The movie is part of a series of contemporary films from the Canary Islands screening at the center. The screening series began Tuesday and ends Thursday, November 29.
Wed., Nov. 28; Thu., Nov. 29, 2007