Spanish painter, ceramicist and set designer. Manuel Ángeles Ortiz was born on 13 January 1895 in Jaén, Spain.

He moved to Granada with his mother, Isabel Ortiz Gallardo, at age three. In 1910 he began to study painting at José Larrocha's studio and attended drawing classes at the Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales. In 1912 he went to Madrid to continue learning at the workshop of painter Cecilio Plà. He returned to his hometown in 1915 and held his first exhibition at the Centro Artístico de Granada, becoming part of the city's cultural scene along with Ismael Gómez de la Serna, Antonio Gallego Burín, Federico García Lorca, Ángel Barrios and Manuel de Falla, who regularly gathered to discuss the arts at El Rinconcillo del Café Alameda.

In 1919 Manuel married Francisca Alarcón and moved to Madrid. Their daughter Isabel Clara was born the following year, and they asked Lorca to be her godfather. In the capital, he frequented the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he met intellectuals and artists like the painter Salvador Dalí, the poet and painter José Moreno Villa and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. In 1922 he designed the poster for the 1st Cante Jondo Contest in Granada, organized by Lorca and Falla, and one year later he worked with Hermenegildo Lanz, Hernando Viñes and José Viñes Roda to design the set and costumes for the Paris premiere of Falla's "El retablo de maese Pedro" (1919-1923) on 25 June 1923. In the French capital he met Pablo Ruiz Picasso, who became a good friend, and exhibited at Galerie des Quatre Chemins (1926) and Galerie Berger (1927). During this period, Manuel illustrated "Poesía de perfil" (1925) by José María Hinojosa; portrayed the writer René Crevel (1926); provided arts for magazines like "Litoral" (1926-1929) and "Gallo" (1928); participated in the Regional Exhibition of Modern Art at Casa de los Tiros, Granada, in 1929; and acted in Buñuel's film "L'âge d'or" (1930).

He was made a full professor of drawing at Barcelona's Institut Joan Maragall in 1935, just before the Spanish Civil War began. During the conflict, he co-founded the Alianza de Intelectuales para la Defensa de la Cultura, worked for the press and propaganda department of the Catalan government, drew an allegory of García Lorca's murder, and displayed a work titled "Fugitivos" in the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris. He was sent to the Saint-Cyprien concentration camp, but Picasso arranged for his release.

From 1939 to 1948 he lived as an exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he exhibited at Galería Müller (1945 and 1947), Galería Viau (1948) and Galería Bonino (1956) and was reunited with old friends like Maruja Mallo, Joaquín Torres García, Rafael Alberti and Falla. He returned to Paris in 1948 and exhibited at the galleries of Henriette Niepce (1951) and Raimond Creuze (1959), where he met his future wife and fellow painter Brigitte Badin. From then on he regularly visited Spain, especially his hometown. The Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo (MEAC) held a retrospective of his work in 1962, and various Spanish galleries offered him shows in the years that followed. He passed away on 4 April 1984 in Paris, France.

Manuel received many distinctions, including First Prize in Engraving from the Buenos Aires Jockey Club in 1956; in Jaén, the Olivo de Oro (1974) and the title of Favourite Son and Gold Medal of the city (1980); the National Visual Arts Prize (1981); a street in the town of Fuente Vaqueros, renamed in 1984 to celebrate him and Lorca (Calle Hermanamiento Manuel Ángeles Ortiz-Federico García Lorca); and the title of Adopted Son of the city of Granada, bestowed when his mortal remains were brought there from Paris in 1989.