Versatile Spanish artist. In 1957, he enrolled in the Valencian School of Fine Arts of San Carlos, where he spent two years, abandoning his studies to devote himself fully to painting. In 1964 he founded the artistic group Equipo Crónica together with Juan Antonio Toledo and Rafael Solbes, where he remained until Solbes’ death in 1981. He resides alternating between his studio in Madrid and that of New York.

He stands out for his large-format work, in addition to combining political and social commitment with humor and irony. With his productions he makes us search in memory for significant images from the history of art, such as the famous figures of Velázquez’s meninas.

He uses a recognizable iconography of universal artistic culture, recontextualizing and reinterpreting it in a sensitive and critical way, thus managing to give it a new meaning in accordance with current events. Valdés was influenced by artists such as Velázquez, Rembrandt, Rubens or Matisse. The Fundació Suñol holds two of the artist’s works in its reserve: Queen Mariana XVIII (1982) and Still Life Morandi II (1985). His work was exhibited in 2009 in the foundation’s collective exhibition entitled ‘Colloquiums’, where his work dialogued with that of the artist Nino Longobardi.