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To find Kcho from the hand of Martha
26June
Articles

To find Kcho from the hand of Martha

If children are always a question we ask to the future, the existence of Kcho is a response to continue loving them: his greatness of spirit, his angel spirit ... His immanence reaches such a point, that if a traveler arrives today in Havana and asks about Alexis Leyva Machado, most likely is he leaves as he came, not knowing who he is. However, if he asks about Kcho, he will be surprised of how many people know him and even protect him, which does not mean they can find him when he is most needed: he has the rare privilege to be here and be expected there, to be there and be expected here. If the ubiquity was possible, it would have to bear his name. We all know that such a long time waiting for him, we always forgive him.

Now if our clueless traveler lands in Nueva Gerona and makes the same Havana questions, he would see that all without exception and even today when she is not there- they would say: "Ah, yes, that is the son of Martha", and from then on the power and mystery of this exceptional woman would be, to a large extent, the explanation for this Kcho that visits us again and calls us to live every day. Of course, in such an intimate and necessarily brief tour as the present one, we should speak of Leyva, the "old", the father, the transhumance, the witty, the carpenter, with his Mondrian multicolored chairs, and festive adventures. He is a wanderer, sailing all the time and does not leave record. His greatest invention was, without doubt, that little television transmitter capable of causing in the neighborhood of 22 street the same question every afternoon, "Leyva, tell us what you are going to wear tonight." And he, with the ingenuity of an alchemist, probably would have said, "The Godfather, Part I", which remains to this day his favorite movie.

When Martha arrived in Gerona, Kcho, if anything, was a hope. It was in the sixties, and in her eagerness founder she structured family, sowed projects, slept little and never hesitated when placed the side of duty. When she talked about Motherland, she unfailingly named Marti, Maceo, and said Fidel. Thus Kcho grew up.

This woman did so much and bequeathed, that today several cultural institutions that bear her name remember her, including the Gallery of Fine Arts in Nueva Gerona, a school, an art gallery in Havana, thousands of my friends and an understandable longing even in those who did not know her. On the occasions I met with her, she always left in me an amazement feeling, as if the voice of a race speak to me. If she shook hands with you, things were shaking; if she laughed, the dead find out, and if she talked, she did it with the charm of old mothers, without the slightest loophole for discouragement. Her advice and orders were not to be ignored. She spoke of life, of what never dies and if you asked her, she had the solution. I remember her telling me: "The problem of a pottery is not the quality of the furnace, but the potters'. And she made some coffee, no matter how much or if tomorrow she would have more.

She was strict and severe in matters of art, to which ethics was joined. Kcho told me that once, while he was studying in Cuba, he should make a drawing and, much as he proposed it, it was impossible. Then she took him by the hand and helped him clear the path. "That was awesome 'as the son of Martha told me many years later; However, when I thought I had solved my problem, he broke the cardboard and told me that now  I do it alone, without help from anyone. So that way she taught me and that's how I learned. "

On another occasion, Kcho, obviously restless, impetuous and mischievous than the children of his age-even today he is among his contemporaries, he was punished at the top of the house, while Martha served a visit. Then it occurred to him to draw an inmate with a huge shackle, and slide the drawing by a sort of skylight which gave the room where his mother was and those guests. Martha saw him; she laughed and suspended the punishment.

In 1986, when Kcho was selected to continue his studies at the National School of Plastic Arts (ENAP), Leyva did not like the idea. He worried the boy, Havana disturbed him. And Martha's son had no other consolation than to grieve and mourn. One day the mother, convinced that there would be no other choice than to say yes, called him alone, explained him the reasons and made him promise to be, if not the best, one of the best students in the country. To persuade Leyva, surely part of the plan, she would take care. And Kcho celebrated inside the joy of a dream.

I imagine him arriving in Havana in 1990, precisely at the time when Cuba was entering the deep and prolonged crisis in its history. It was at that time, perhaps in 1992 when Martha first told me of his son and asked me to take care of him and report her periodically. I held at that time a leading position in the Ministry of Culture and had gone to Nueva Gerona to assess how the project of Pottery Workshop was going and to hold meetings with several writers and artists, including members of the Terracotta protruded 4 Group, the cultural manager Martha Machado, the poet Francisco "Paco" Mir and artist Agustín Villafaña, the latter two friends from the early days of the Hermanos Saiz Brigade.

Inheritance (The Flag)As soon as I returned to Havana, Martha was calling me for "controlling" the task related to her child. I remember that "invented" a visit to ENAP, among others painfully hidden purposes, to meet the academic performance and behavior of the boy. In my tour of the facility I saw him engaged in the task of drawing without model. He did not flinch, and the teacher who accompanied me told me quietly, referring to Kcho: "That one, when proposes himself something, does not stop until he does it." "And is he disciplined?" I asked, making me a fool. "Well, he loves going to coffee shops and the neighborhood of whereabouts." Four years later, this teenager that came from Gerona was graduating with the highest score and showed a thesis or dissertation that since then, classified among the most surprising of all who have seen at the National School of Plastic Arts of Cuba. That body of work consisted of the today very famous Cuban Landscape (better known as The Shield), the worst traps (commonly identified as The staircase), Heritage (known as The flag), and four landscape: The Island, The sea, The mountains and The tornado. Thus began the unstoppable rise of Kcho. Interestingly, in Europe and North America doomsayers decreed the "end of history". In fact, the world was different, but Cuba resisted.

I have with me as one of my warmest memories, the day Kcho, already graduated and not without some impatience, invited me to see a work that he had literally locked in a room of the house where he was living. We were barely a minute in the room, until he opened the door of the room, and in my eyes he was, imprisoned by the four walls of the enclosure, like a sleeping dragon, no less than The race, certainly one of the more forceful and shocking works that have been done in Cuba and abroad about immigration. He asked me what I thought, and I said, without a shadow of doubt: "It is art, is simply outstanding, unique, and we will go with it to the end." Then it was exhibited at the Havana Biennial, and a copy of it in museums and galleries in different countries. No one ever dared to obstruct the natural circulation of that work as heartbreaking as brave. The German collector Peter Ludwig acquired it and exhibited it for a number of years in the Ludwig Forum Aachen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, until I lost track. Helmo Hernandez, Jorge Luis Prats and I met again with it on that site and eventually I could stop to observe each of the dozens of objects, the effect of all the sensitivity and the hand of a truly original artist, is was transformed in tiny rafts traveling in one direction, that of the Promised Land, the industrialized North and seductive.

With children of his cultural project in the district of Romerillo

From that day forward not only years but sorrows and glories have passed. By passing, a century has passed over our heads, "the shortest in history," according to Eric Hobsbawm. Today Kcho has five children and leads one of the most beautiful cultural projects I've known: the Study Kcho Romerillo, Laboratory for Art, which, given its significance for Cuban culture, I will devote some other chronic in the future. The project, which was inaugurated by President Fidel Castro on the eve of January 8, 2014, when they met 55 years of his triumphant entry into Havana in 1959; It consists of the Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque library, with its corresponding reading room and Internet free access for all residents; the Art Gallery Martha Machado, in which now is exhibited part of the personal collection of works by Kcho of works by Wifredo Lam (very soon the work of other artists of international renown will be displayed: Warhol, Spencer Turner, Servando Cabrera ...); Tocororo Chamber Theatre, in which has its headquarters The Beehive of the neighborhood and where diverse scenic nature presentations are made; The ship, space for contemporary art, exhibiting right now The Thinker, collection of works of authorship of Kcho himself, and the Taller Experimental de Grafica Romerillo.

This new cultural center in permanent interaction with the community, conceived by the artist not as something alien to the people, but as a factor of social change and progress, includes sports facilities, cultural spaces, downsizing public places, among others. The study Romerillo Kcho is located in a neighborhood of the city historically little favored, a few meters from what was the thousand times missed by Kcho National School of Plastic Arts, precisely the site where that teacher told me that he escaped all the days. Such is the life of this consistent and creative big boy, already graying, but never gets tired.

Martha,  Kcho’s  mother, , and Kcho, the son of Martha, are similar as two drops of water. Both were / are heavy and there was not nor is obstacle in this world that contains them. Their adoration was mutual, despite death, despite life without stopping to gauge the limits. I ask: "How is it possible, if it's been a century?" And Kcho replies: "It is that she has never left; you do not see? “ And we talk about something else not to get sad. So whether he exhibits on the Moon or melts on Earth, Martha will be with him and Kcho will be with Martha. Children like that, eternal parents.
Havana, 2002/2014.