Feeling and breathing the paint work

Inside the color of fire is a plastic and conceptual conversation between Vicente and Christian´s work. They have two different artistical personali- ties connected throgh feeling and breathing the paint.

Vicente had a sculptors´ background. He dominated volume and the plas- tic sense of space and flats. He would soon quit sculpture in favor of pain- ting following a strong call from color: color is light; it is life. He began from scratch in the oil technique. He tried over and over until he found what he was searching for.

Christian, self instructed artist; lives, enjoys, suffers and feels painting. Freedom in the fact of creating reigns through his work and invites the spec- tator to freely discover what lies behind his work without imposing answers.

Inside Dressing ourselves with sea crust (2015 to 2020) from Christian Hugo in room 1, he invites us to reflect over the effimery of life constant

change and eternal return. The sea evoques our feelings, emotions and ex- periences. It takes us to a place of nostalgy and memories. It tells us about the principle of everything. The sea as the origin of life, as evoquing the first months in wich the human being grows floating in the amniotic liquid. Christian is interested in the origins of life.

Inside the color of fire dedicates a space to show what happened before the creation of the final work: drafts, burnt papers in process, color mixing pallete, pictures of the spaces where the artist has worked and a video of the process, creative essays wich are essence to his artistic creativeness.

A series of burnt paper collage work, are the starting point of the plas- tic conversation between Vicente and Hugo Martín that can be enjoyed in rooms 4 and 5 of the Museum.

Christian´s principal sources of inspiration are observation of nature and an intimal dialogue with it. He recreates in each work his particular gar- den, the base is the terrain in wich to plant his seeds; emotions, sensations, stimuli, signs and symbols are submitted to fire. Gas, turpentine and sol- vent initiate the combustion. The face to face with the work begins; it is an improvised and playfull process in wich the artist ignores what shall happen, what shades, colours, textures, traces or tracks are going to arise. Water, sand, fire, air, they all intervene in this action. All nature in favour of creation. The artist becames a master artisan, a Demiurge, as per the gnos- tic philosophy. After the generated caos (khaos), the artist evoques order (kosmos). Restores the pieces and organices them as per his own perception of reality: order, perception and beauty articulate his work.

Esteban Vicente shows us dreamed forms of the precise landscapes of his memories: Castille, New York or his Bridgehampton garden. His paintings are the result of internal lyric meditations. Vicente´s work as Christian´s is an evolutive painting. There is a key difference in their techniques. Chris- tian´s is a hand on hand technique and Esteban uses a painting Spray to pulverice colors. There is a distance between the canvas and the artist. This technique allowed him to saturate color without the final stroke of the brush which succeds to bring a strong light to his work. This is the inspiration for the Al color del fuego show. An instance is Yellow, 2021, whose dialogue with Diptych: Untitled, 1987 by Esteban Vicente is extraordinary.

Vicente´s drawings from the 80´s and papers 04´ from Hugo dialogue in space. A sequency of organic forms float from the surface in a melodious way. These trap the spectator in a slow and musical way.

A series of magnificient oil paintings from Christian Hugo Martín stand out: Espuma, 2001; Corteza I, 2021 y Corteza II, 2021. The pictorical gesture concentrates on the intensity of the brush stroke. There is a material mani- pulation of the pigment. They float in a space with references to the aquatic and vegetable worlds. The interrelated forms of Corteza I and Corteza II, are formed in vertical sequences, between visual and touchable, between two and three dimensions, cold and warm shades, between saturated and smooth wich is all resolved thanks to the formal equilibrium, the harmony and the containment.

Ana Doldán de Cáceres

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, Director Curator

ESTEBAN VICENTE. Number 10, 1983

CHRISTIAN HUGO MARTÍN. Pensando en Esteban Vicente, 2021

ESTEBAN VICENTE. Diptych Untitled, 1987

CHRISTIAN HUGO MARTÍN. Yellow, 2021

ESTEBAN VICENTE. Untitled, 1988

 CRISTIAN HUGO MARTÍN. Composicion on prussian blue I, 2001

ESTEBAN VICENTE. Untitled, 1967

 CRISTIAN HUGO MARTÍN. Forma III, 2020
© Chrstian Hugo Martín VEGAP, Segovia 2021

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