lit a candle 5h ago83 years old and still making things. That's a good long harvest.
Their story
Manuel Boix Álvarez was a Spanish painter, sculptor, engraver and illustrator from L'Alcúdia in Valencia who helped introduce new realism in Spain in the 1960s. Winner of Spain's National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1980, he became one of the most recognizable visual chroniclers of Valencian culture through paintings, etchings,…
Manuel Boix Álvarez was a Spanish painter, sculptor, engraver and illustrator from L'Alcúdia in Valencia who helped introduce new realism in Spain in the 1960s. Winner of Spain's National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1980, he became one of the most recognizable visual chroniclers of Valencian culture through paintings, etchings, posters, book illustrations and bronze sculpture. He died in L'Alcúdia on 23 September 2026 at the age of 83.
Born on 18 December 1942 in L'Alcúdia, Boix studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia. In 1964 he came to notice with the collaborative Tríptic monoteïsta alongside Artur Heras and Rafael Armengol, artists with whom he would continue to exhibit. Through the 1970s series such as Falconeria (Cetrería) and Trama i ordit deepened his figurative language, producing emblematic works including L'Arc del triomf and El martiri de Sant Sebastià. He also contributed drawings and criticism to magazines ranging from La Codorniz and El Viejo Topo to The New York Times and La Vanguardia.
After the 1980 National Prize and a long stay in New York later that decade, Boix widened his practice across illustration, graphic work, posters and sculpture. He is especially known for etchings and images of Tirant lo Blanc, for designs linked to the Germanies and for nearly every album cover of the Valencian folk group Al Tall. From 1992 he reappeared as a sculptor with El punt dins el moviment, on the Valencian sport of pilota, and pursued bronze series such as Borja, El Laberint and Els equilibristes that filled gallery space with theatrical figures.
His bronze figures and gallery installations of the 1990s showed the same precise line that had marked his etchings, now set free in three dimensions for viewers to walk among.
Later painting series including El Rostre returned him to large formats. Anthological shows marked the Casa de la Cultura of L'Alcúdia in 2012, La Nau of the University of Valencia in 2014 and a multi-venue exhibition in Xàtiva in 2023. Family and friends held a wake at the family home in L'Alcúdia, followed by a private cremation. Colleagues and Valencian institutions remembered him as a generous craftsman whose line had entered the region's shared memory.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Europa Press, Valencia Diari and La Vanguardia. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1Manuel Boix with sculpture in a Valencian gallery exhibition
by People Forever
He was still sculpting last year, saw it on his site.