[CubaNews] Carlos EnrÃquez, phallic and evil

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carlos EnrÃquez, phallic and evil

El rapto de las mulatas (1938), his most remembered painting 
in which women, horses and guards merge in sort of 
a ritual dance that gives frenetic mov
By Ciro Bianchi Ross

http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&item=2990&cont=show.php

Cubanow.- When you hear about the life of the great Cuban painter, Carlos EnrÃquez, you regret not meeting him personally. He was one of the best interpreters of the Cuban landscape and an excellent portrait artist and bequeathed, on his paintings as well and on his novels, a very personal view of his surroundings.

Almost always he was accompanied by very beautiful women, could be a French writer or a Haitian model, however, he was a solitary who lived possessed by an urge of self-destruction and also an alcoholic that ended up destroying him as an artist and finally killing him. He talked about the work of friends and enemies, always determined to use the most brilliant phrase but at the same time the one that hurts more. NicolÃs GuillÃn described him as phallic and evil.

Notwithstanding, he was a generous man. During his last years, when he had nothing to give and some of his friends asked for help, he gave them some of his paintings to sell and make money. Even so, FÃlix Pita RodrÃguez said in one of his poem that he made every effort during all his life to make believe that he was as bad as Benvenuto Cellini and as evil as the Marquees de Sade. Pita added, useless effort, âalthough some of us, sometimes, /I confess it to you now/ at the discreet sound of death/ to see you happy/ faked that we believe you.â

Carlos EnrÃquez was born in 1901, in Zulueta, located in the central region of the Island. His father wanted âto pay for his studiesâ and send him to the United States to study Accountability, but there the boy acquired the technical instruments for his painting.

As other people of his generation he hoped to break the standstill that marked the Cuban plastic art and he only found here hostility and indifference. His drawings were labeled as obscene and outrageous and a sample of his work was removed from the room of the exclusive society that exhibited it the same day of the opening.

Then he traveled to Paris and the four years he spent in that city at the time that surrealism was booming completed his development but did not change it in essence. He continued to be the painter of Cuban sensuality and charm; the artist who knew that âpainting is to find again the lost worldâs magic, its primary splendor.â

Some people considered him as the first Cuban surrealist. However, for a lot of critics as Adelaida de Juan, that assertion is not completely true. She says: âThe immediacy, the earthly sources, were deeply rooted in him; his imagination and eroticism did not require of the âmarvelous pure chanceâ or the surrealist subconsciousâ

Carlos EnrÃquezâs dream has an immediate and carnal verificationââ He stated: âI believe that my painting is constantly evolving even the interpretation of images produced between wakefulness and sleepâHowever, this does not mean that I am surrealistâI am interested in interpreting the environmental Cuban sense but far away from European schoolsâI am interested in human shape, in landscape and, above all, the combination of both because every man has his own landscape, interior or exterior, of which he can never isolate himself.â

El rapto de las mulatas (1938), his most remembered painting in which women, horses and guards merge in sort of a ritual dance that gives frenetic movement to the work. Splendid feminine figures filled up his pictorial world, distinguished by the use of colors (blues, mauves, reds) and transparency. His horses and vegetation on his pictures always portrayed the womanâs body. There is a sexual pleasure in his nudes scarcely seen in our painting. EnrÃquez liked to define his work as a local writer of romances [criollo romancero]. That definition can include the three novels that he wrote: La vuelta de Chencho, La feria Guicanama and TilÃn GarcÃa, the only one that he published in 1939 while he was still alive and in which the main character, as a new knight errant, travel across the Cuban fields proclaiming the redemption of the peasants and the need for an agrarian reform.

One morning in Vedado neighborhood, Carlos EnrÃquez blocked the way of a young man who will become later one of the great Cuban writers to ask the way to the Curà hospital. The painter looked dirty, had a beard of several days and in spite of wearing a winter suite in the middle of the summer he was shaking like a jelly.

The young writer wished to shout to the passers-by that the man going to pieces was a Cuban glory, but he did not do it and limited himself to show him the way. He neither gave a hint that he had recognized EnrÃquez.

A few days later, at dawn, the artistâs maid found him sitting in his rocking chair with the radio on. He seemed sleepâ That same day was the opening of an exhibit of his work. Those who arrived at the gallery located in Obispo Street found the door close and a sign: âCarlos EnrÃquez has died. It was May 2, 1957, fifty years ago.â

* Traductora: Maria Luisa HernÃndez G. de la Vega

July 16, 2007
 

================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com
================================


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