“I have never acted falsely,” says the artist, who presents an anthological exhibition in Mazarrón
For Manuel Coronado (Águilas, 1942), telling his life is talking about his painting. The history of this columbine can be known through art, which has been both his vital turning point and his means of expression. Through painting he has colored each of the emotions in his biography, making his works a reflection of his experiences and the times he has witnessed. “I am a chronicler of what I have lived through,” he says proudly. With just turned 80, his figure needs no introduction, as he is a singular creator in the Spanish art scene of the 20th century. His latest exhibition is the proof: ‘Principia’ is the faithful portrait of a life dedicated to art. It is an anthological exhibition in which his artistic career is collected, which has run parallel to his own life. Since June 3, the exhibition hall of the Popular University of Mazarrón welcomes this opportunity to see his work first-hand.
Coronado begins by reminiscing about his childhood. Despite suffering the onslaught of a cruel post-war period, he assures that he was happy. When his father died, he moved to the Balearic Islands with his family. There he developed his artistic vocation and began to think of painting as his way of life. He was trained in schools and worked a thousand and one trades to achieve it: «Delivery boy, dishwasher, buttons… I have tried to live from painting and my reward is being able to do it». Proof of this is his biography, since he has exhibited everywhere. Greece, London, Paris, Sweden, New York, Canada, Italy and the entire Spanish geography are already scenes of his work. And for that he feels grateful and lucky: “Life has given me everything.”
It may even be that all those destinations have fallen short, because more than 2,000 paintings are counted in his production.
Despite its diversity and productivity, Coronado does not frame his work in any style, but in his own: “I am simply a painter and my paintings are known.” In them it is observed that his painting «is the joy of living, it is love, color, motherhood. The world is beautiful and the people are good. Her sensitive and warm gaze is highly influenced by the figure of women in general and her mother in particular, because she “was a post-war widow with three children and she had a hard time, but she never we lacked nothing.”
What he learned from her inspired his work, to the point of confessing that, for him, “creativity is women, it is what nature gives so that human beings can live.” That is why he represents female bodies, disguising feelings and passions through a veil or a mask “of those that the human being finds in life”. They are faces of particular beauty, sometimes calm and other disturbing, that provoke an unforgettable aesthetic experience.
Between flowers, books and birds
All the paintings are his children, but he has a special affection for some of them. ‘The circus’ arouses great interest in him, due to the doubt between lies and truth, through which he recognizes that everyone acts in life, “but I have never done it falsely”. He also recalls ‘Human Shame’, a sadly topical painting that shows the drama of people who lose their lives in the Mediterranean Sea, “a place of cultures that today has become a large mass grave.” His last painting, ‘Looking at the stars’, is proof of his nature as a chronicler, a painting that represents his current life: «I live in Águilas, among flowers, books, paintings and birds, isolated in the mountains, and I am happy because I have earned it. I look at the sky, I see the stars and a sunset. I have had a wonderful life and I am going to have an old age as I have always wanted.
From June 3. Exhibition Hall of the Popular University of Mazarrón.
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