converging lines of RAFAEL CALVO ON THE GALLERY OF LIGHT AND TRADES By Jorge Rivas
Traces, or rather metaphors of Cuban, artistic creations become Rafael Calvo (Nueva Gerona, 1970), exhibited at this year's Havana Biennial in one of the main halls of the Uffizi Gallery and Light, in which the viewer enjoys a masterful performance of woven lines of different sizes, through which a visual discourse that transcends its impressive variety of textures and contrasting effects.
After venturing into the vast universe of abstraction, bold and daring, Calvo breaks this time on a hackneyed theme: Afro-Cuban culture, which reverses, not to mention a detailed study of which manifest talent, patience and imagination-in new iconography of signs and figures defining a crucial moment in the evolution of a style "adventure" and enigmatic in this work takes us from a free draw to the synthesis of geometric line, from drawing to painting, and from the concrete to the essentials. Based
folklorists and ethnological studies that the artist made in his native Isle of Youth, research which drew on the experiences of some young African testimony that in the decade of the 80 attend school in that territory, arise narratives of these works recreated in an intense cultural phenomenon of fertility in the formation and development of our Cuban. Calvo
reveals, with uninhibited creative freedom, rhythmic techniques of African primitivism. Both inks on cardboard and in its medium and large format charcoal on canvas, a reduction achieved all Afro-Caribbean synthetic naturalism, whose myths are torn between their nature and a clear trend figurative abstractionist. Inquiries Artist
take shape through the convergence of continuous lines, flexible, sometimes resulting in small grids curves and circles. Iconography of some of the African deities and mystical Mount thick with lush vegetation, the symbolism of blackness, the African liturgy and syncretism and fusion derived from meeting of two cultures, are summarized in guidelines, stains and structures that make allusive language and autonomous.
A peculiar characteristic is prevalent throughout this series of papers presented by Calvo in the Biennial of Havana. While the exhibition's title may suggest, in addition to the technique used in the preparation of the tables, the convergence of different cultures, syncretism between the Catholic religion, inherited from Spain, and the Yoruba, Africa, is a careful revelation of the phenomenon that transcends today. In these recreations preserving aesthetic premise highlighted by Don Fernando Ortiz: Blacks brought as slaves to Never been properly Christianized America, so that syncretism was no more than a simple translation of the names of beings or deities of each of these religions. Looking carefully
and enter each of these works are the most diverse experience sensations. In addition to the poetry they radiate, there is a rhythm that shakes and exalts. Inside each piece exudes a vibe that recalls the magic secret of engaging and leather drums sounded lucumíes Yorubas and blacks in the tyrannical courses in the Caribbean as they sang and danced in desperate prayers of freedom and longing. Calvo
Each work is an example of an unforgiving domain technical exercise to perfection. His strokes monochrome, usually black (ink or charcoal), spread on surfaces slightly worked with other pigments (yellow, gray, blue and ocher sober and warm) that emphasize the "naivete? mystique that attacks the specific budgets allocated to false values \u200b\u200bof contemporary folk art. However, reflective creation and expression is inserted into the avant-garde art, which has earned a place of recognition, it becomes very personal repertoire of forms with many different variations, arising from life itself. __________________________________
stroke to the image Virginia Alberdi
For Havana, October 2003.
transit As a result of abstraction, the works of Rafael Calvo held a variety of signs, which allows you to address the multiplicity of lines, the integration of strokes to articulate a framework of elements, sometimes family, sometimes completely unknown, but related to each other, whether carriers of novelty or a priori repetition.
In some of his works emerge fragments of a world heritage converging elements of African culture among us, mysterious, yet intimate harmony peculiar codes. Is not free, or folklore that presence: the saga Previous painstaking research, which gave body to his watchful eye on the tribal marks on the face of young Africans during the years of the eighties studied at schools of his native Isle of Youth event This allowed him to lean out an otherness full of questions persist. The validity of artistic endeavor lies in the assimilation of those experiences underground, amalgamated in the vision that has the skin Calvo and aesthetic nature of meaning.
figures vanish in linear strokes, a non-free games, in which we can estimate the spontaneous rhythmic composition, that to entice the viewer, to catch him. The ritual of this meeting is developed gradually after the line in pursuit hypnotic that does not leave until you get the perfect picture taking, or the appropriation of the spirit that has imposed on this fad creator.
In some of these works, particular forms and symbols are repeated with insistence, to finally form the atmosphere of organically prepared compositional elements, which constitute the whole image, a cohesion that is accepted as part of this world back to itself, although Open-such is the dialectic of the creator.
sometimes rambling, but always powerful and vital, we presents the poetic revelation. They are fragments of dreams that arise in the middle of the vigil, which concern without distress.
As in the past with color, now gray and black strokes of ocher demonstrate the skill of the artist, his creative energy and a zeal peculiar austerity. At work with charcoal as the pen, it requires rigor-ever waste-the artist.
Ultimately, Calvo is inserted into a plastic proposal clears the representativeness matérica enigmas, designed this time by a different, much more alive and present in comparison with topical references that were once taken as approval levels our medium. Calvo
dynamite symbolic perception, in the plausible effort to highlight the sign, suggestion, the possibility beyond the platitudes and made surfaces. _______________________________________
AFRICAN APPRENTICE
for Francisco García González
Sometimes you discover that passes through a path not chosen. It is the way he throws. I have before me a three-headed Elegua, an image of startling power. Lie along the mighty trunk stylized sketches of naked creatures await the hands of the learner. But the apprentice wizard does?, What?, Talks about the price of charcoal, the same spent in a dark landscape that weaves behind a face or mask, to kill African. The plans are suggesting a possibility of perspective at all costs, despite the ambiguity between figuration and abstraction some decorative. Attending the act of creation is a funny thing, the attacker eavesdrops on the mystical moment and suddenly all the trades repairs become tedious, it's all the same settings as the apprentice ...
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all started thanks to the internationalism, proletarian, he say. The island located south west of our platform in 1976, a proposal for a champion of African nationalism, he changed his name Pines by the Youth. That was how the Isle of Youth was filled with students of other lands. The world had changed somewhat: the blacks who were previously brought to this country as slaves, now came to study and then return to their countries, but the same trip after all. And the means to travel ahead of an otherness that the original customs exist or are treated as other or disappear. The youth remained intact in some way ..
Maybe it was in any street of Nueva Gerona the arts apprentice Rafael Calvo noticed that those young people who walked through the town, displayed on their faces and hairstyles distinguishing marks arcane and certainly owners of old messages, far away.
an artist's mind burns easily. In the apprentice, the blacks who came from the most fucked up of the possible sites evoked the idea of \u200b\u200ba fantasy world, foreign, so distant as when the ocean was crossed by galleons crammed with slaves sold by their own brothers. That place was Africa, not Africa or the national champions OSPAAAL, but something instinctive about the vision of blackness, the land where a face crossed by a scar
had a meaning in a mysterious vibrating ancestral sense. It was a good idea to come from an apprentice engraver and not an anthropologist.
Brands and hair began to haunt the aesthetic thought of the learner. What else is Africa? Whatever it was must have been very important to him. Finally, after intense lobbying blacks were allowed to photograph, perhaps violating the provisions of their tribes. The learner knew then that makes hair and spoke of the place occupied by their owners in the social scale of their villages and surrounding areas. That was his thesis ...
brand owners returned to their farms, or their old metropolis, and the work of the apprentice has had many inquiries, but always returns to the starting point: What else is Africa? An idea that is gaining formal expression in a dense world of frameworks that give rise to a game, figurative or otherwise, in which the same keys and Arcane convey the idea of \u200b\u200ba journey. The journey to the roots, opposite to the black slaves, or students, to the West.
What else is Africa? "Black braids, rows of princes, palm leaves? "Landscapes from the top, which suggests that the only possible state of salvation is to take up necessary? Will naive look who recreates Elegua, guards and other accessories from the main track in us? Does the darkness of a mysterious world where the unconscious cute? It is a matter of care, the learner is not interested in black here. What else is Africa? A place, is common?, How eternal return? If it were not so bad at all. Back is sometimes not desirable, but in any case always gives up or is inevitable ... and that the learner knows.
_________________________________________ Rafael Calvo, lines and rituals
By: Virginia Alberdi
When talk in these times and with each domain of expressive drawing and sobriety, may not be obvious to Rafael Calvo (Nueva Gerona, 1970 ), as I'm sure you do not have paragraph which have seen his current exhibition converging lines, which is displayed in the Gallery of Light and Crafts in The Habana Vieja.
As a result of transit through abstraction, Calvo works held a variety allows significant that address the multiplicity of lines, the integration of strokes to articulate a framework of elements that make us and other family members sometimes enigmatic, but always related plastic in its definition.
In some of these works emerge from the experiences peculiar imagery of African origin. The experience, if anything, was direct, as in the Isle of Youth, the artist observed marks on the skin rituals carried by students from the continent to which Cuba generously opened their classrooms at the island territory.
But the figures fade in linear strokes, a procedure not without its ludicrous character which appreciates a spontaneous rhythm in the composition to entice the viewer.
As we consider the series as a whole, it is possible to discern particular forms and symbols that are repeated insistently. In this Calvo has put his mark of identity.
As previously done with the color, now gray and black strokes of ocher Sibra demonstrate the skill of the artist, his creative energy and an admirable restraint. Whether at work in charcoal and in the pen, it imposes strict, never waste of talent.
already Calvo style becomes apparent. And that is net profit for the artist and art rejoices Cuban Calvo dynamite know how certain forms of symbolic perception in the plausible effort to highlight the sign, the suggestion and the new possibilities of expression above the commonplace. ______________________________________________________
BY IMAGINATION CALVO
By Dr. Rolando Rodriguez Garcia
May 9, 2003
As every operator when it is genuine, this is an artist of the visual arts (I can not at the end ceñirlo painter) in constant search for expression, to objectify, their worlds. Hence the dramatic transitions, rare, occurring in their spiritual journey.
Just take a look at the dates of the works of Rafael Calvo several catalogs to see the fruitful scores, the open transnmutaciones, that without ceasing to be one and the same, do not hesitate to express in different ways, outstanding image : sometimes abstract, geometric, sometimes semi-figurative, and sometimes amalgamating strokes and images of either bias. With everything he does gives us sight. But not enough. It also was flexible on color, because if sometimes light filled his work, in others wrapped in a profound and mysterious shadows that remind happily Milian.
ductility, fluidity, are synonymous with the painter is not willing to be dominated by the monotony, and by the appreciation of those who want an easy job and sweet, nor any pressure. But equally the mark reflection and conceptualization intense the image to be developed, that of someone who walks ojiabierto to find the magic in your environment that hides and escapes to the profane.
showed early that provision and I realized, impressed the imagination of the artist solvent, when I met who had worked in his native photography and beautiful Isle of Youth, with the idea of \u200b\u200bleaving the track recorded of young Africans a day invaded in search of bread generously know that Cuba offered. He composed his work in Africa Cuban island, with tribal marks on their faces. In times of cruel
escaseses, Calvo was no doubt admirable work. In this connection I have drawn attention to what is said of him when they lacked resources. In the Isla de la Juventud a presentation in the middle of the special period, and rightly said "Made in Cuba", which showed the 28 crayons in a suggestive and evocative his work and recreated on an experimental and bold characters, "not less real and fanciful. "
This made me remember other times of economic crisis, which were not least, decades ago, when our great teacher, Raúl Martínez, I said: "Being a genius when have the best quality ink and paper to make the best poster, not worth it. The problem is a genius when you have the worst ink in the world and the worst part. "
Press for printing engravings, clay or canvas, are not means distant, ignored for the time that plastic Calvo in his teaching gives us a work full of harmony and vitality.
But sometimes do not know what to admire most in the artist, if his work or being a child of the values \u200b\u200bof generosity, selflessness, instilled by the Revolution.
When you know the work that has delivered to a grandparents' house, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, the Association of Economists, dependencies of the office of the Republic, to the administration People's Power, or his work in creating a ceramic mural in Pinar del Rio, we realize that marketing has tempted others, has not touched the virtues, love for art of this young man. This would seem to me that in the case of his compatriots has established an emulation of kindness, tenderness, or in that region of Cuba, defended tooth and nail for thieves not wrested north of Cuban sovereignty, the beauty of virtue seems touchingly wild.
I witness on this exception. Please note that Calvo has now donated to the Latin American Scientific and Cultural Foundation José Martí, Spain, eye, Armando Hart and the speaker are his deputies, his work on Marti, recently exposed in the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, which will be part of the annual prize to be delivered soon that institution and that this time has been given to Dr. Concepción Campa, director Finlay Institute and discoverer of the meningococcal vaccine. Know that previously Marti works on Cuban artists and Vicente R. Santos Serpa Bonachea, respectively have been delivered to Mario Benedetti and Rigoberta Menchu. For everything that I can affirm that the many merits accumulated by the work of this artist, in the events in which he participated at all have been free. Pulse have been obtained, by dint of imagination and gallant task.
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