Faustino welcomes me into his studio. As I sit down next to the window we opened today, his cell phone rings. It's Juan Manuel Seisdedos, the great painter from Huelva, to thank him for the link that he sent him that same morning from the American soprano Jessye Norman (1945 – 2019), directed by Herbert von Karajan (1909 – 1989), interpreting Death of Isolde. They both comment for a few minutes on the wonderful interpretation, which I have had access to, and Faustino ends the conversation with a phrase that for me would be worth the content of an entire day: “It is what saves the world: art.”
Faustino Rodriguez Macias (Huelva, 1957) is a painter. A Renaissance and also surrealist mind, born in a century and decade different from these artistic movements. His way of observing and perceiving his surroundings led him to the plastic arts from a very young age. He lived his early years in the populous neighborhood of San Sebastián, in Huelva, next to the old cemetery of the city, between what are today the streets Fray Juan Pérez and San Sebastián, links between the Huelva that was until the one we know today that began to revitalize in the last two decades of the XNUMXth century. “Since I was a child I have always had the perception of the plastic arts. Seeing those lights how they changed with the sun at dusk. Much of this is reflected in my work Dominio de la tarde sobre la calle San Sebastián número 37”. The artist grew up in this landscape, and therefore, his work. There he had one of his work studios, Villa Farnesio.
He studied drawing at the Polytechnic Institute of Huelva, today IES Pintor Pedro Gómez. “The knowledge of drawing has been very useful for drawing and perspective, although I have developed my technique and skills through curiosity, since I have always wanted to know what surrounds me. Like the master Leonardo, I am interested in science, astronomy, geography, composition and its aesthetics. I have been and am self-taught. My reference, in addition to the Renaissance and its figuration, although I later go off script, is the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico (Volos, Greece, 1888 – Rome, 1978), where the world of the irrational is captured with everyday objects in unusual contexts, an illogical and at the same time believable reality. Although I also greatly admire artists around me such as Seisdedos, Castro Crespo y Antonio Belmonte, from whom I learn and I am pleased with their friendship.”
«There are intellectuals who will digest the flamenco, others do not. It is possible that the context and the people who have been exporters of this art have not had sufficient training or culture to integrate it flamenco in society. But I understand that the flamenco has made an important place for itself in it. Although it should be valued a little more, it is also true»
Faustino Rodríguez has exhibited individually and collectively throughout the country. I would like to highlight Painters for 92 (1991) Painters from Huelva (1992) Villa Farnese (1994) Gallery of Dreams (2007) Metamorphosis (2014) or Chrysalis Days (2021), among others, as well as his collaborations in issue 1 of the literature magazine County of Fog (1984), the monthly literature and art sheets in The Phantom of the Glorieta (1985), design of the anagram of the Fifth Centenary of the discovery of America for the City Hall of Palos de la Frontera (1987) and the commemorative poster of the Provincial Patronage Quinto Centenario (1992), and illustrations for the story Such beautiful corpses, de John Cobos Wilkins (2008), also, among others.
Asked about his other passions, music, he tells us about his approach to Conservatory of Huelva, where he learned to play the transverse flute, a hobby that still persists today. “Art cannot be broken. We are heirs to each other and we are evolving. Bach, Monteverdi, Chopin, Wagner, Franz Litz… Music and poetry are the fundamental complement to my painting and my way of understanding life. Much of my work is based on these arts.” To do so, we only have to enjoy his creations on literary works. For example, Borges or the more recent poet Juan Cobos Wilkins. “The harmony of the painter, the musician, the writer. In short, we can be faced with the harmony that nature gives us with the golden number.”
– Faustino, do you like flamenco?
– Of course. Obviously, when there is a good singer, of course I like him. I remember your admired Enrique Morente a lot, in a meeting in Doñana. small committee, how he sang!
- And of the three disciplines –cante, touch, dance–, which one do you prefer?
– I have seen wonderful things in all disciplines, but I am left with the cante.
– Do you know cante?
– I know what some friends, including you, have taught me.
– Should there be in flamenco, or do you think there has been, a Renaissance that makes this art reach more sectors of the population and makes a bigger place for itself in the intellectual world?
– A point of rebirth was the Granada competition of 1922. Intellectuals of the stature of Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca promoted the flamenco. A few decades later, artists such as Camarón, Paco de Lucía, Lebrijano or Morente promoted this art even further with their ways. There are intellectuals who will digest the flamenco, others do not. It is possible that the context and the people who were originally exporters of this art did not have sufficient training or culture to integrate it into the flamenco in society. But I understand that the flamenco has made an important place for itself in it. Although it should be somewhat more valued, it is also true. My father liked Manolo Caracol a lot, I am passionate about him flamenco having pellizco, as you fans say. I like Lola Flores and Carmen Amaya, Bernarda and Fernanda de Utrera, and La Niña de la Puebla. I was very excited about this one cante of the bell ringers. In addition, she was a fairly educated woman. I also like the new contributions of singers such as Arcángel or Rocío Márquez, and musicians such as Raúl Rodríguez. flamenco It is not hermetic. It is a living entity, without rupture, with constant comings and goings, with fusion. Each one in his own way contributes his new vision to what he has learned. It is logical that the new generations, some of them with notable studies and instruction, want to have their own and open voice in art.
«I like the new contributions of singers like Arcángel or Rocío Márquez, and musicians like Raúl Rodríguez. flamenco It is not hermetic. It is a living entity, without rupture, with constant comings and goings, with fusion. It is logical that the new generations, some of them with notable studies and instruction, want to have their own and open voice in art.
– What would you bring to flamenco?
– That would come up in due time. The most important thing I could contribute would be my aesthetics and know-how. You cannot, you should not, trivialize.
– Faustino, how would you express in your painting that sublime moment of pellizco?
– I like fandango, and although it is difficult to transfer the feelings of one artistic discipline to another, it is true that it is done, and we do it, quite often. Let me think. It could be Niño Miguel playing, with his body bristling and lace coming out of his arm, and Paco Toronjo's mouth opening in a moan.
I imagine this work by Faustino, done in silver point, that technique used by great artists like Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Dürer. On a specially prepared paper, traces were made with a soft, well-sharpened metal rod. Over time, silver oxidizes and takes on a delicate, warm brown color, highly valued by artists. One of Faustino's last creations is using this technique. Exhibited in Chrysalis Days, I had the enormous pleasure of delighting in them.
– Tell us about some experience you have had around the flamenco and that you still remember today.
– Jesús, we experienced one of them together. It was at the Ibero-American Forum in La Rábida. Paco de Lucía and his sextet were playing. What a way of interpreting. What a way of directing with his gaze, and of harmonizing such a wonderful and complex group of musicians. Another experience was seeing Niño Miguel in the streets of our city. So much genius in so much humility! But above all, the experience that I remember most and that I cherish most is the one I shared in Doñana with Enrique Morente. It was a literary meeting organized by Antonio Ramírez Almanza and José Luis Gonzálvez. Artists such as Juan Manuel Seisdedos, Manuela Sánchez Niña de Huelva, Juan Cobos Wilkins, among others, attended it. That day, since knowledge takes up no space and as I said before I have always been very curious, I was present at a talk that an Argentine Jew, whose name I do not remember, of Sephardic and Ashkenazi descent, gave on the Kabbalah. When we finished we were up on a dune, admiring a beautiful landscape of buried trees. It was like a wave of sand that sometimes doesn't let you see the tops of the trees. Before that we had seen a doe with her baby. There were the speaker, Juan Cobos, Juan Manuel Seisdedos, Enrique Morente and I. We had to go down to the foot of the enormous dune where a jeep was waiting for us to give us a glass of cava. Nobody wanted to get their feet covered in sand. Enrique had the idea of rolling down, to everyone's surprise. When he got down there Morente had turned into a meatball (we both laughed). After a few hours, he sang at a small gathering, which was one of the magical moments that the flamenco has given me.
«How would you express in your painting that sublime moment of pellizco"I like fandango. It could be Niño Miguel playing, with his body bristling and lace coming out of his arm, and Paco Toronjo's mouth opening in a moan."
As we have observed, Faustino Rodríguez is a living entity within art itself. One of the most represented figures in his work is the Clepsydra. Perhaps because that time meter to which he refers is what makes him leave the present moment to return later transformed and renewed with new contributions to each emotional and/or temporal moment, expressing in his work what he feels. For me, the plastic leaks that violate his paintings are like those thirds in the cante that seem unfinished, but if the singer wanted to finish them off with exact precision they would lose the emotion of the moment to become musical scores, almost mathematical. We both look through the open window today as the evening falls, with the tones that to me sound like soleá, and while I sing it a little, and Faustino sits in front of the work he now has in his hands, on the myth of Sisyphus, he comments: “Art, I believe, is the noblest manifestation that human beings have given.” Can you be more flamenco? ♦
→ See here the previous installments of the series A WINDOW TO THE CANTE, by Jesus Naranjo, about flamenco and intellectuality:
# A WINDOW TO THE CANTE (I) José Juan Díaz Trillo, an intellectual facing the flamenco
