Manuel Espinosa was born in Buenos Aires in 1912. He attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Cárcova.
After a brief surrealist period, he is co-founder of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención.
He subscribes the Manifiesto Invencionista and participates in the exhibitions presented by the group in 1946: in March, the Peuser Salon; in September, the one organized at the Centro de Profesores Diplomados de Enseñanza Secundaria; in October, at the Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos (SAAP) and in the same month at the Ateneo Popular de La Boca.
Later his work remains within a geometric abstraction characterized by the repetition of the square or circle throughout the compositional surface. On this serial disposition he works shadows, superimpositions and displacements, which allow him to incorporate spatial relations of advance and retreat.
He is part of group exhibitions such as Del arte concreto a la nueva tendencia, Museo de Arte Moderno (1963), Más allá de la geometría, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (1967), Salon Camparaison, Paris (1967), Veinticinco artistas argentinos, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (1970), International Biennial of Cagnes-sur-Mer, France (1970), Projection and Dynamics, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1973), Current Trends in Argentine Art, Artistic Center of International Meetings, Nice, France (1974), among others.
In the 80’s he participates in exhibitions of the trend called “sensitive abstraction”, among which is Geometría 81, presented at the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de La Plata. In the city of Buenos Aires he takes part in La geometría. Homage to Max Bill, organized by the Centro de Arte y Comunicación, La abstracción sensible, an exhibition accompanying the Jornadas de la Crítica, both held in 1981, and Del constructivismo a la geometría sensible, presented at Harrods in May 1992, among others.
He has participated in the main exhibitions dealing with the development of abstraction in the Río de la Plata. Among them are Homenaje a la vanguardia argentina de la década del ’40, held at the Galería Arte Nuevo (1976), in Vanguardias de la década del ’40. Concrete Art-Invention. Madí Art. Perceptismo, Museo Eduardo Sívori (1980) and among the most recent, in Abstract art from Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933/53, presented at The Americas Society, New York (2001). In 2001 the Juan B. Castagnino Museum in Rosario dedicated a tribute exhibition to him.
He died in Buenos Aires on January 24, 2006.