Manuela Ballester was an outstanding participant in the ferment that characterised the generation of the 1930s in Valencia, and a key figure among Spanish Republican artists in exile. Her childhood was favourable for her development as an artist since her mother, Rosa Vilaseca, was a dressmaker and her father, Antonio Ballester (1884–1930), a sculptor and professor at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Valencia. In 1922 she began studying painting at that school, where she met many members of the Valencian avant-garde movement, including the poster designer Josep Renau (1907–1982), whom she was to marry in 1932.
M. Ballester began her professional career by making illustrations, photomontages and fashion figurines for magazines and publishers. During these early years she also took part in avant-garde art shows, such as the Exposició de pintura, escultura i dibuix [Exhibition of painting, sculpture and drawing] organised by the Agrupación Valencianista Republicana [Republican Valencian group] in 1931. After the Civil War broke out, she became very active on the Republican side, producing a rich panoply of work. Amongst her best-known works of this period are the poster ¡Votad al Frente Popular! [Vote for the Popular Front, 1936] and many photomontages made for politically and socially progressive periodicals. Her influences ranged from Soviet art to John Heartfield (1891–1968). She also served as the publisher, editor and illustrator of Pasionaria, revista de las mujeres antifascistas de Valencia [Pasionaria, the magazine of the antifascist women of Valencia] in 1936–1937.

Her collaboration with political periodicals and her intellectual and artistic engagement with the question of women’s liberation remained at the forefront during her years of exile in Mexico (1939–1959), where she found asylum after the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War. During her first years in Mexico, she was employed as an illustrator and graphic designer in the advertising industry. She also worked together with her husband on many collective art projects, like the murals of the series Retrato de la Burguesía [Portrait of the bourgeoisie, 1939–1940] and España hacia América [Spain to the Americas, 1945–1950].

During this exile period her most ambitious project was a series depicting traditional Mexican garments (1945–1953), consisting of oil paintings and life sketches of customary dress from the country’s different regions, accompanied by photos and pieces of clothing. During the 1960s and 1970s, when she lived in the German Democratic Republic, M. Ballester’s political commitment never faded as she produced socially and politically engaged prints for German, Cuban and Mexican publications. She also worked in other genres such as landscapes, portraits and still lifes, revealing a strong interest in the materiality of objects, as can be seen in Bola de vidrio sobre blanco y sobre negro [Glass ball on white and on black, 1977]. Throughout her life she also wrote copiously, filling many diaries and publishing in newspapers and outlets such as the poetry magazine Cosas [Things, 1981].

Her work can be seen at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, the Museo Nacional de Cerámica y Artes Suntuarias González Martí in Valencia, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Vicente Aguilera Cerni in Vilafamés and in numerous private collections in Spain, Mexico and Germany.