The singer exhibits a hundred works of his pictorial work, in which dream worlds abound
Manolo García finds rest in painting. It is what he needs now, to rest, after suffering acute myocarditis, a disease that has forced him to cancel twenty concerts. That balsamic effect of the plastic arts was already experienced when he was on tour. Before going on stage, García can be seen absorbed in a watercolor or charcoal drawing. Not because he is gripped by panic, on the contrary, the Barcelona singer is a stage animal, but because he finds a certain calm with the brush. “I calm down and find meaning in everything, even being in a city other than mine.”
Paintings, colored photos and drawings make up ‘Cuerpos celestes’, an exhibition that adds up to a hundred pieces and which opened yesterday at the Casa de Vacas cultural center in Madrid. If in concerts the singer absorbs the public’s energy and returns it until he is lifeless, Manolo García lives in absolute freedom in front of an easel, in an anarchist world, without the restrictions imposed by the music industry. Through collage, drawings, sculptures, canvases and the occasional work reproduced later on the cover of his records, the composer exorcises his inner demons. «Until ten or twelve years ago I did not dare to call myself a painter», argues García, who has pondered for a long time if he was prepared to exhibit his work.
Before the guitar, Manolo García grabbed the brush. His mother gave him his first easel when he was fifteen, the age at which he recorded his first “babbling” on canvas. “First I studied applied arts and then I was a graphic designer, although I continued painting as a self-taught”, explains the artist, whose exhibition will remain open until December 24.
Own style
A painter with naïve lines, who intermingles with influences from surrealism and impressionism, he has been nourished by the knowledge of all artistic movements, although his teachers are well defined: their names are Dalí, Mariano Fortuny, Albert Bierstadt and Leonora Carrington, among others. With them he has established his own style, in which dream worlds and anthropomorphic creatures abound.
Manolo García works with oil paintings in which he reflected the vicissitudes of the Madrid Movida, his passion for comics and the current confusion, a world in anguish that is difficult for him to portray due to how elusive it is. «Feeling alienated from our current traffic has led me to this point; I find my vital north and my sundial time making songs and painting», assures the musician, who confesses «apprentice of everything and master of nothing».
«Until ten or twelve years ago I did not dare to call myself a painter»
But what is painting for the man who was the lead singer of ‘El último de la fila’. “It is looking for the lost Eden, it is burning in the friendly fire, it is living the passion every day, rediscovering myself and being in harmony with myself,” argues García, who has published three books about his drawings and paintings: ‘Of captivating life’ , a compilation of his paintings between 1985 and 1992; ‘Vacaciones de mí mismo’ (2004), which is a journey through all of his pictorial work; and ‘The Fruit of the highest branch’ (2011).
The musician’s admirers will experience a ‘déjà vu’ when confronted with some of his works. And it is that the painting ‘El pulpo y el escolar’ served as the cover of his first solo album, ‘Arena en los bolsillos’ (1998). «I run away from the idea that life is obligations. For me reflection is important as my own core of defenses », says the singer when asked if he is disciplined when it comes to picking up the color palette.
Over the years, Manolo García has not abandoned his love for the counterculture, something that he continues to claim. All this evolution can be traced in the exhibition. «The visitor will be able to see from my things from the 70s to some painting that I finished a fortnight ago».
The Manolo García who paints is not very different from the Manolo García who sings. «The musician can hide more emotion, open spaces to uncertainty. On the other hand, the painter has it more complicated, because in some way he bares his soul », says the painter, whose convalescence has forced him to postpone the presentation of his most recent recordings, ‘My life on Mars’ and ‘Desatinos Plucked’.
«In the last two years I have not stopped painting, I have done it obsessively. The fact that they confine you makes me search within myself, because the paintings force you to be alone. The meaning of life in today’s society is to camouflage the precariousness of everything. But in the paintings there is no precariousness, there is reality », he stresses.
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