These airy girls of Valdés, inhabitants of a garden that reminds us of a gentle animated forest, have gone from being trapped in the gothic severity of an ancient court to reaching a reasonable Eden, following a controlled escape, in a city where there is no court, in an open city that is never caught slumbering. A city that appreciates their shape, their faces, their size. Thus, the hieratic nature of their countenance is compensated by their baroque or geometrical hats, born from their arboreal imagination. They look like daughters of the fables coexisting as mates, friends of the trees set free by their feathered heads, by their imaginary flight of gendered angels, among the rest of the inhabitants of the forest.
Manolo Valdés, from the Mystery to the East of Eden. Written by Javier Rioyo
Excerp from the book Manolo Valdes. The New York Botanical Garden. La Fabrica Ed. Spain 2014