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Roberto González: The Malecón, painting inside
26March
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Roberto González: The Malecón, painting inside

About the exhibition

Underlie in the human condition the animistic spirit that dominates in the child, in the primitive man and in those who, liberated from the conscience, manage to unleash the automatism that creates magical worlds. It could also be the case of this Cuban painter (Havana, 1972) when he integrates in his works a figuration that has points of contact with reality and that is organized on the plane in a capricious way, in the manner of dreams.

Roberto González is a man of many paradoxes and imagination. Minimalist in the resources -and in these times also in the composition-, conceptual, surrealist, sprinkled with dyes of humor (it is Cuban), and, above all, with eyes very open to the human environment, provided with an excellent technique in the field of line and color ... A kind of combination of "ingredients" that saw him as an original artist and of his time.

The artist, graduated in graphic design at IPDI (Havana, 1993), has managed to build a bridge between the psychological and the physical. His work, then, is a continuous exploration of the evolution and survival of humanity to find strength in dreams, hopes and aspirations, but also of reality wherever it is. A personal work that shows, in very elaborate compositions, the core of human emotion, expressing triumphs over obstacles overcome.

 

The wall of Maurits, 100.5 x 81cm, acrylic canvas, 2018
The wall of Maurits, 100.5 x 81cm, acrylic canvas, 2018

 

In the current exhibition entitled El muro, -opened in the gallery Carmen Montilla of the Office of the Historian of Havana (Oficios, Old Havana), in greeting to the 500th anniversary of the capital-, the Malecón is the protagonist of his stories. Sometimes lyrical, another mysterious, is the atmosphere created in his compositions - immersed in a scenography of neutral backgrounds, which flirt with abstraction many times. With admirable trade integrates elements of today mixed with the tradition of Western art and, of course, ours. It is at this point where the work of Roberto González can be located, who paints without previous drawing, following the dictation of his interiority, imagining to the beat of his gestures, while layer upon layer the brush operates the miracle of a smooth, magical painting, intelligent "I jump into the void of the soul's questions ...” The looks can go back to the viewer to the extravagances of Dalí, the imaginative flights of Chagall, the metaphysics of De Chirico, and even the fixation of the moment that Magritte got. But there is more, there is always a concept outlined, between the forms and tonalities.

That "balcony" to the Caribbean is, for the artist, a huge sofa where we rest from everyday concerns, a maze to channel the thoughts, the "frontier" of a daily utensil, a star, trampoline? to infinity, a rope that knots at will, and even compares it to a tree with deep roots ... The human figure, which multiplied filled the surfaces in previous series, in this is summarized, if at all, in a lonely figure, that although small dominates the environment. From day to day, he extracts and exposes, with a certain dose of humor in the images, the universal social problems of man on Earth.

 

After the storm, 140x90cm, acrylic canvas, 2018
After the storm, 140x90cm, acrylic canvas, 2018

 

Debtor of Surrealism

Roberto González discovers to the world the surrealism of the time he lives. A movement begun in 1923, with a second manifesto around 1930, to sing the disenchantment of a humanity that was heading towards the development of technology with increasing uncertainty. In this evolution of ideas, images and philosophies of the twentieth century, but renewed and nuanced with tints of reality and consciousness, the painting by Roberto González could be inserted. Reasons and questions are combined in an art that seeks historical continuity, following the invisible thread that gives meaning to tradition. His creativity unfolds on the chosen support the free images, delineated from his own inner world. Regarding the treatment of the image, Roberto González approaches surrealism. He works more directly with reality, and not from dreams as the followers of that movement do. But they are not "stories" told. Play - in a few words - with surrealist scales but from the point of view of image not concept.

There is no doubt, on the basis of the proposal of this creator, whose work is in important collections and has been exhibited in galleries, museums, art fairs in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and the United States, it also lies and with force, the theme of the perception of existence, not only from the place of both the spectator and the artist, but as an artistic-philosophical-conceptual view of the time, of our time. Weight, frontal composition and zigzagging angularity, pictorial matter that appears in stable bands and rectangles, tendency to the tectonic organization, on one hand; veils, hard limits that at times enclose spaces, on the other hand... The weapons are served., and Roberto Gonzalez then organizes a battle, an interaction between suffocating structures and poetic daydreams that constitutes the most valuable, original and comforting element of his paintings ( acrylics / canvas) before our eyes and our souls. The excellence of his drawing allows him to structure a universe that the artist unveils from a painted canvas, in which he polishes and brings out lights, resulting in a tonal painting, with a low palette and an impeccable craft.

 

Tsunami, 120x90cm, acrylic canvas, 2018
Tsunami, 120x90cm, acrylic canvas, 2018

 

Photos: Courtesy of the artist