1. •Galerie 3+2 Paris

1. •Galerie Zunini. París

1973   

1974

1979  

1. Orgy in honour of Salvador Dali –
   

2. (Read story - only Spanish version available)

1970

1971

1975

1977  

1978

1980

  1981

1982   

1983

1984   

1985   

1986

1987 

1998   

1992   

1996

1969

1. Born in Nerva, Andalusia.

1947

1. Stows away on a ship bound for Brazil.

1. •Casino Espagnol de Tanger, Marrok

1949

1948

1. First steps as an artist in Granada.

1. Stows away on another ship without knowing its destination. Arrives in Tangiers.

1951

1. Travels to St. Tropez on the Côte d’ Azure on a safe conduct granted by the French embassy in Morocco, staying for a short while before moving on to Paris.

1956

1960

1965

1. Lives for a few months in Madrid

1. Lives for a year in Milan and then for another in Rome
   

1. The city of Basel, Switzerland, becomes his home for a year
   

1. e then moves on to Brussels, the city where he lives the longest after Paris.
   

1. In 1988 he moves from Brussels to Madrid.

1. •Galerie Creuze, Paris

1957

1. •Salon de L’Art Libre, Paris

1. •Galeria Alvarez del Vayo. CARACAS. Venezuela       
   

2. •Librería Inglesa. Paris
   

3. •Galerie Yvon Lambert. Paris
   

4. •Galerie A. de la Salle. VENCE
   

5. •Salon de la Jeune Peinture. Palais de Beaux Arts. Paris
   

6. •Galeria Gmurcinska. Colonia
   

7. •Galerie 3+2 Paris.

1. •Hommage a la Literature Française. Palais de Beaux Arts. Paris
   

2. •Galerie Argos- NANTES

1964

1. •Artistas Españoles Contemporáneos. "Spagna Libera". VENECIA  FLORENCIA            F.FERRARA  RIMINI  REGIO EMILIA.
   

2. •Salon  de la Jeune Peintura. Palais  des Beaux Arts, PARIS
   

3. •Galerie KERCHACHE. Paris.
   

4. •Galerie FRANÇOIS PETIT. Paris. 
   

5. •"50 Ans de collage. " De Picasso a nos jours" MUSÉE DU LOUVRE. Paris.
   

1966

1. •Casa Raffaello. URBINO           
   

2. •Galeria Europa. Berlin
   

3. •Galerie Sydow. FRANKFURT
   

4. •Galerie 3+2 Paris
   

5. •Salon de la Jeune Peinture. Palais de Beaux Arts. Paris

1967

1. • "Strange and scaring Pictures. Galerie 3+2 Paris

1968

1. •Galerie Znurcinska. Akte im 20 Jahrhundert. KÖLN.
   

2. •Galeria PIERO FEDELI. Milano.

1972   

1. •Bienal de VENECIA

Fragment from : "EL DESCENSO DEL AMAZONAS"

autobiographie by Modesto Roldán

“What were those luminous lines of Antonio Machado?” “My childhood is a memory of a courtyard in Seville where the lemon tree bloomed.” I am quoting from memory. I spent my own childhood not far away in a village called Nerva in the Río Tinto district of Huelva province, where two poor immigrant families, one from Seville and the other from Badajoz, came together. The Andalusian family brought with them a daughter, and the Extremadurans five noisy brothers.  One of these was my father.

I was born twenty years later, the child of that meeting and those landscapes.

My mother was a handsome, intelligent women, tall and well-mannered, who spoke with a fluency that was a rare gift among her social class. She was my first love and I have not yet forgotten her.   

It is essential for me to relate my experience of childhood between the age of eight and twelve years, because this is the longest and most intense period in the life of a man, and it determines and sets his affective temperament and conduct until the end of his days.

My mother was a seamstress, and it was she who made the elegant, graceful dresses worn by the ladies of the town. Our house was a workshop where the young lasses came to work, singing and laughing. I remember it as a kind of oriental harem, or like Ingres’ beautiful round painting, The Turkish Bath. Of course, memory, when it is pleasant, magnifies the emotions of the 10-year-old boy. Shafts of light as the curtains shift in the breeze materialise form in a blinding scene in which a round shoulder briefly appears, the swelling of an ivory breast, a white and carmine thigh, only to disappear again, suspended in the gloom but indelibly engraved in the brain.

At that age I was a precocious and astute “voyeur”, always on the look-out for these surprising and marvellous scenes.

My feeling that not all of these visions were pure chance only added spice to the situation, in which I might pass briefly from contemplation to fantasy, taking my delight to new heights. These moments are so gratifying that, happily, they have remained in my memory for a lifetime.

We are made of the stuff of dreams according to a great poet and a specialist in dreams. I am not making it up.

These are the sources of the maker. The other threads of creation are random, depending only on chance and need.

I arrived in Paris from Tangiers having fled Spain without a passport, but only after many adventures including a sojourn in prison in Brazil and incarceration in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a jail I was lucky to leave alive.

France in general, and Paris in particular, were my beloved home, and they remain so to this day. The culture and the people met my desires exactly. As a young man of just over twenty who had read many of the French classics in translation, including Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert and more besides, this was the world I had dreamed of in the gloom of the asphyxiating Catholic nationalism then reigning in Spain.

           At that time I had no calling as a painter. My dream was to write. I saw literature as the noblest and highest task of man, and indeed I still do. But free will does not exist. It is merely one of many false beliefs. So I tried the world of painting, creating images as a potter shapes clay. Whether I have succeeded is a matter for you to decide. I have only tried to clothe my ghosts with matter.”

1. Died in Madrid
   

June 2014

1926