Although Old Master drawings by Spanish artists have only very recently become a subject of interest to international collectors, DE LA MANO has been active in Spain since 1995, advising numerous private and institutional collections on their acquisitions of works on paper.

Traditional art-historical opinion with regard to Spanish drawings has frequently repeated the notion that the brilliance of Spanish artists was exclusively confined to preliminary sketches for final compositions. However, through the series of catalogues Trazos de las Lucesand FECIT, which the gallery has regularly published since 2002, we have attempted to assist in refuting this widely extended but erroneous opinion. Employing rigorous criteria of attribution, conservation and provenance, these publications have presented an extremely large number of previously unpublished drawings by great Spanish artists and by foreign artists working in Spain.

In recent years the gallery’s active focus on the study of the 16th- to 18th-century Spanish school has expanded to include another school that has been totally overlooked by the art market and art historians, namely that of the artists active during the colonial period in the various Spanish viceroyalties in Latin America.

As part of our committed intention to disseminate and internationalise knowledge of Spanish and colonial drawings, over the last decade DE LA MANO has regularly participated in the following fairs: Master Drawings London, Master Drawings New York, and more recently in London Art Week and Fine Art Paris.