VERSIÓN INGLESA ENGLISH VERSION - Fundación César Manrique

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free hand that forms geology” 48 . And like Manrique, the writers and critics who knew him best viewed
his work in that light. Manolo Conde, in the presentation for a collective exhibition of works by
Manrique, Rueda, Sempere, Vela and Zóbel held at the Neblí gallery in May and June 1962, after
confessing his friendship with the participating artists, “of whose present tense and circumstances I’m
more or less aware”, insisted on this unitary perception of Manrique’s painting: “That lost world has
unquestionably exercised a magic influence on César Manrique’s spirit, an artist who obsessively
attempts to convey his childhood memories, reworked with the passing of time and in constant
pursuit of pictorial expression.”
“Earlier, it was the crops of his island, Lanzarote, the wise and millenary way of using a nearly
barren soil, that inspired his paintings. Now, in possession of a simple and elaborate technique, nude
mountains and cones of volcanoes preside his work.”
“His is painting with a cosmic intention, therefore, sensitive and tactile, its topography reveals man
as loyal to his origins and at the same time, in a broader dimension, the constant concern in Spanish
painting for the material worked, a dense, viscous reflection of the baroque spirit lurking, to a greater
or lesser degree, in the hearts of all Spaniards” 49 .
Manrique’s own writings, both with respect to himself and, more rarely, to some of his artist
friends - Pepe Dámaso I would say more often than any other - confirm this mooring to his childhood,
the pantheistic experience of existence and the animism of an extinguished mineral fire from whose
vestiges Manrique obtained his intensity as a painter.
Early in the sixties, Manrique returned to, or more precisely, articulated the discoveries made in
previous years on the treatment of material in figuration interpreted with an art informel approach.
This concurred, time-wise, more or less with Millares’ Antropofaunas (Anthropofauna), for instance and
Martín Chirino’s first Aeróvoros (Airovores) and Afrocán; as well as with Lucio Muñoz’ first organic or
organicist period, to name but a few of his contemporaries.
At the time he drew extensively from the fields of archaeology, palaeontology or anthropology
for his main subjects; such themes were also addressed by the above artists in response, I assume, to
48. Eduardo Westerdahl, Manrique, Colección del Arte de
Hoy, Madrid, June 1960.
49. Manuel Conde, texto cat. Manrique, Rueda, Sempere,
Vela, Zóbel, Galería Neblí, Madrid, 1962.