Manuel Rivera Hernández (Granada, April 23, 1927 - Madrid, January 2, 1995) was a Spanish painter, a founding member of the El Paso Group.
From his childhood he showed great disposition for painting and sculpture, for which his father sent him to the workshop of the image maker, Martín Simón, with whom he learned the trade, working with wood and plaster.
When Manuel was only nine years old, the Spanish Civil War broke out.
In 1952 he founded the group La Abadía Azul in Granada.
In 1957, he participated in the creation of the El Paso group, a group of highly relevant artists and critics that revolutionized post-war Spanish art and which led to the introduction of informalism in Spain, holding the group's first exhibition in April 1957. the Bucholz Gallery in Madrid, where he presents his metallic fabrics, made in a single plane.
In 1959, he held his first individual exhibition in Madrid, in the Ateneo halls.
From this moment there is a consolidation of Rivera's plastic expression.
This supposes that whoever contemplates the work ceases to be simply an observer, and becomes an active subject.
In 1967 he began what would be his second pictorial stage, with the Japanese Papers series, in which he agreed to new technical procedures, with a great influence of oriental art and an intensification of color.