Manuel Larino

Artist: Manuel Larino · mlarino.com ↗
Raster: raster.art/artist/manuel-larino ↗
Based: Born 1978, A Coruña, Spain
Practice: Generative art joining algorithmic structures with weather, natural cycles, memory, and drawing
In the set: Forecast ↗ · 365 editions
Links: Full bibliography ↗

Manuel Larino is a Spanish-American visual artist whose route to generative art began with drawing, painting, and commercial illustration. Raised between Spain and the United States, he studied drawing at the Joe Kubert School before earning a BFA in Fine Art with an illustration concentration from Ringling College of Art and Design. He subsequently worked for magazines, record labels, and publishers, retaining pencil drawing as a foundation even as deadlines led him toward digital production.¹ That continuity matters: Larino approaches code less as a break with illustration than as another means of organizing line, color, and composition.

His mature practice draws its subjects from observable environments. Larino describes natural patterns, environmental cycles, and emergent structures as starting points for generative rules, with the process embedded in the concept rather than applied as a neutral production technique.² Works based on tides, gorse, rain, and time consequently treat code as a model of forces that remain partly beyond the artist's control.

A forecast made visible

Released by Art Blocks on November 15, 2023, Forecast comprises 365 unique artworks.³ The collection abstracts rain falling across a paved surface and connects weather's unpredictability with changes in human feeling. A contemporary report characterized the project as both a tribute to Galicia's rain and Larino's first presentation with Art Blocks.⁴

The project begins with geometric paving patterns. Concentric lines establish a visual ground, while simulated barometric pressure and humidity influence a circle-packing system that distributes the likelihood of rain across each composition. Wind direction determines the orientation of visible rain trails, and sixteen palettes translate personal memories and moods into color.⁵ These mechanics do not illustrate a literal forecast screen. They produce an abstract field in which meteorological variables organize density, rhythm, interruption, and atmosphere.

Forecast treats uncertainty as both a meteorological condition and an emotional structure.

Forecast by Manuel Larino — Forecast
2023, Forecast

Live on Art Blocks: forecast-by-manuel-larino ↗

From landscape to system

Larino's investment in environmental systems extends beyond Forecast. In 2025, the exhibition Naturaleza digital: Marea, lluvia y otros algoritmos brought together works concerned with the sea near A Coruña, rain on stone streets, and Galician gorse. Reporting on the exhibition emphasized his long preparatory process of sketching and note-taking before programming.⁶ A second account identified the presentation as Galicia's first exhibition dedicated to generative art and noted that Forecast had sold out within an hour.⁷

That year Larino was selected for the Art Blocks and OpenSea residency in Marfa, where he received four weeks of supported time to develop a new project.⁸ The experience led to Gift of Time, a continuously changing work whose mechanics draw on calendars, lunar phases, mechanical cycles, and blockchain time.¹ Its moving structure exists independently of the viewer's arrival, extending Larino's interest from weather systems to temporal ones. A video record describes the work succinctly as a piece that does not merely represent time but runs on it.⁹

Larino's institutional visibility also expanded through presentations organized by The Generative Art Museum. At Sónar 2025, his work appeared in a showcase connecting generative practice with Barcelona's creative-coding community.¹⁰ He was also listed among the artists in Responsive Dreams, an exhibition framed around code as a medium of creative expression.¹¹ Across these contexts, the consistent element is not a fixed visual signature. It is a method: observe a phenomenon, isolate its rhythms and dependencies, then construct a generative system capable of producing unforeseen but conceptually bounded outcomes.

AB[500] x 1 Forecast · 365 editions Generative systems Weather Natural cycles Code and drawing

Bibliography

The references cited in this essay are listed below. For the complete bibliography see the Manuel Larino links page ↗.

References

OpenSea's 2026 interview traces Larino's education, illustration career, generative transition, Marfa residency, and development of Gift of Time. OpenSea interview ↩
Larino's artist statement explains his use of code to model natural patterns and environmental cycles. artist statement ↩
The official Art Blocks collection record gives Forecast's release date and edition count. Art Blocks collection ↩
La Voz de Galicia reports Larino's birth year and place and discusses Forecast as a tribute to Galician rain. La Voz 2023 ↩
Larino's project page documents Forecast's pressure, humidity, wind, circle-packing, and palette mechanics. Forecast project ↩
La Voz de Galicia reports on Naturaleza digital and Larino's sketch-led working process. La Voz 2025 ↩
El Ideal Gallego previews Naturaleza digital and records Forecast's 365-work scope and sellout. El Ideal Gallego ↩
Art Blocks announces Larino's 2025 Art Blocks and OpenSea residency in Marfa. residency announcement ↩
Larino's Vimeo presentation records Gift of Time and its continuously transforming temporal system. Gift of Time video ↩
The Generative Art Museum documents Larino's participation in its Sónar 2025 presentation. Sónar 2025 ↩
Responsive Dreams lists Larino among the artists in its generative-art exhibition. Responsive Dreams ↩

Authored by gpt-5.6-sol (AB5D structured pipeline) · supervised · ~65K input / 4K output tokens · 12 sources verified · 2026-07-11