VERSIÓN INGLESA ENGLISH VERSION - Fundación César Manrique

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line of a virgin world, a world undergoing formation, much before its natural crystallisation. (...) The
forms that I bring to my canvas are the forms of a world with no dawn, on the first day. They’re nature
uncatalogued, without academic notes, before Linnaeus classified them [...] My botany and my zoology
are fantastic” 7 . Manrique acknowledged the figurative nature of his work - the references were
obvious - echoing words borrowed from Antonio Manuel Campoy in his description: “There is nothing
abstract about this sensual world,” Campoy wrote, “although it could be a world with no dawn, an
uncatalogued world (...) nature not annotated on academic cards (...) nature is just beginning (...) this
is what creation must have been like before Linnaeus pigeonholed it (...) This is fantastic botany and
zoology” 8 . Manrique, and Campoy, labelled his oeuvre as figurative, insofar as there was a grounds in
reality for what was recognisable in it, even where it was fictitious, re-created or invented. The pure
speculation inherent in abstraction was still absent.
A month had not yet gone by since the above profession of faith in figuration when Manrique
went back on his words, asserting to José de Castro Arines that “painting has only one short-term
future: abstraction (...) I only find this [true] passion for painting in abstraction” 9 . Now then, exactly
what did Manrique, and Campoy, and by extension critics in general, construe the term abstract art
to mean? In principle, abstraction was anything besides a literal copy of reality, an insufficient if not
wholly inaccurate definition. Castro Arines described a mural on which Manrique was working in 1955
in the following terms: “Decoration inspired by engineering: machines, geometric figures, purely abstract
inventions” (our emphasis) 10 . The painter had also referred to another of his works - the Hotel Fénix
mural mentioned above -, as a “purely abstract work with shapes and graphisms rich in composition and
colour, representing groups of women that I title Toilette en el campo (Toilette in the country)” 11 .
Compositions where reality has been decomposed along Picassian lines, divided by very obvious
lines and organised in keeping with other than the most orthodox realist patterns, preferably colour
harmonies, were regarded by both Manrique and Castro Arines to be abstract. This was a system
inherited from cubism, a cubism (the comment is obvious, but perhaps necessary) deprived of its
speculative radicality that many painters continue to invoke with notable effectiveness. Yet another
example of the persistence of this confusion can be found in Ventura Doreste’s description of
Manrique’s allegedly abstract works as “submarine landscapes, nude skies, nearly lunar deserts” and
he refers to a painting, Noche de malpaís (Night in the badlands) as “the point where figurative and
7. Falange. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2 January 1955.
8. Quoted by Gilberto Alemán in “Manrique habla
para los pintores canarios”. El Día. Santa Cruz
de Tenerife, 7 April 1957.
9. José de Castro Arines: “Para César Manrique
la pintura sólo tiene un futuro próximo: lo abstracto”.
Informaciones. Madrid, 5 February 1955.
10. Ibídem.
11. Juan Hernández Rodríguez: “César Manrique
expone en Madrid”. Falange. Las Palmas de
Gran Canaria, 2 January 1955.