Viñes: A Painter at the service of painting
by Alain Gobin

Viñes: A Painter at the service of painting Alain Gobin If we ask ourselves about Vines' discourse, an answer comes immediately to spirit: no discourse, but a slight musicality of painting. An inner standard has served as reference for the artist. And this has never been denied, nor even attenuated. True compass of his art, it has been observed that a search for harmony, form and colour is sheltered in the heart of this painting. Not~knowingly, yet more or less consciously, Vines has been able to expound, with luck and success, the best aspects of the interdisciplinary. Music-Poetry-Painting are his three poles of attraction. Vines has extracted, from each of these vivid art sources, the elements necessary to achieve the plenitud of his nature, of harmony, and of e Color quilibrium. First, equilibrium is the Cezanian search' the comprehension of the organisation of the world's structures. It is necessary to know how that works from the inside. Viñes will never abandon this search, for it is endless. Then, plenitud is Bonnard's search over nature. For reencountered nature the artist is, just by painting, in harmony with the cosmos. Actor as well as spectator. A superior manner of painting known by the Japanese since the XIII Century, and to which Bonnard owes so much, is found there. Finally, harmony is man's reconciliation with the world. Form, shape and colour are no more than one. The painter is the creator who investigates this most primary condition, this world truth. In fact Viñes has never moved away from nature because he has always thought, with no doubt, that art could never do with it. In short, his course has been that of preserving those mutinous zones. Viñes has never accepted that anyone-tell him what it is he ought to do, no what he ought not to do. His temperament has always taken him to transgress that which seemed established. Not as a form of defiance or rebellion, but because of the normal state of his artistic nature. In his painting, as much as in his music, transgression is his source of improvisation. And improvisation leads him the imaginary. This particular trait of his personality stands out throughout his work. The freedom of painting and of creating has found in him an inventive, imaginative spirit, willing to study all the routes, even those which are closed, to go back if necessary. The dissonant harmonies, the complex compositions, have to be placed in perspective, like the flamenco he so well performs. Why not go in this direction, if I feel it so? The trade will do the rest in order not to fail. It is here that this freedom of purpose and expression so impressive in Viñes' painting comes from. Purpose which could be formulated in the following manner: In what way can the original idea prosper reducing it to its fundamental structure? In what way can the mineral come out of its original cinch? Certainly, there can be no improvisation or invention, no matter in what field, without a part of coherence and even logic. But it is necessary to get rid of the natural jail which can constitute every logical person or every academic instruction. Figurative or intelIectual transgression is one of the antidotes. Baudelaire had, from the very beginning, understood this fundamental antinomy of the act of creation when he wrote: "imagination is the most scientific of faculties because it's the only one which understands the universal analogies". A form of thought is found here which has, most probably, encouraged the surrealistic movement, but more so an independant thought such as that of a Roger Caillois. He, questioning himself about the curiosity which constitutes Nerval's only tooth, understands and proves the importance of the fertile anomality. Nature's language teaches us, in fact, through the painter's eye and the hand, what the creative improvisation, that destroys the system's rigidity and tranforms it, is. Such is the source and foundation of poetry, that it never ceases to play with dynamism and transformation. Order against chaos! But nature is never the chaos of nothing, and it is up to the artist, or the painter, or the musician, or the poet to tie up once again the strings of coherence.Viñes is most probably one of those actors that, conscious of what is at play, have a part in this neverending confrontation. Viñes hasn't writen on this subject, he hasn't delivered any speach in this direction, but his work is there, present, to demonstrate the justice and the authenticity of his trajectory and of his compromise. In this sense, his painting is neither "pretty" nor "cute". It simply exists and vividly testifies the fragile vibration existence is, and through the even more insusbtancial string of identity. Viñes has never intended anything other than being an "honest artist" in his paintings. But the quality of the man makes us say, once again, that this definition is insufficient, and that it is necessary to repeat the path of his creation for the mere understanding. It's a pedagogy, in the old sense, that he has always handled with attention and precaution. There are paintings that require more from he who observes them than from he who has painted them. This is all the magic of painting. It is also the modernism of the act of painting that, from prehistoric caves to contemporary "grafitti", and through the abstraction of the 50s, reunites the contemporaries with their ancestors from the Renaissance, which makes Rembrandt be no less modern than Picasso, nor Derain more fauvistic than Rosso Fiorentino, nor even less so, that Bonnard be more poetic than Piero della Francesca. It is for this reason that Viñes' art is inscribed in a continuity which seems to have had no beginning, and about which one asks oneself if it shall have an end. Situated in a moment of pictoric consciousness, and in a precise time in society and social obligations, Viñes' work has a life of its own which nobody can doubt. Reason for which it forms part of the history of Western art. In view of the history of art, Viñes presents the particularity of having gone through all of the great founding trends of modern art, of being situated among the brilliant creators of his time, of having approached all the major themes in painting. Viñes' art explores the whole of modern painting's spectrum. He lives the end of cubism in its most vivid phase. Through having experienced, in his years of training, analytic criticism and having practiced a sort of synthetic cubism, he maintains reminiscence of the abstraction of the structure during the rest of his career. The influence of Severini, the constructivist, and of Lhote, the cubist, will be appreciable in him until the 60s. Because he comes from cubism, passed on to surrealism, Viñes belongs to a generation that has established bridges, linking the most unyielding trends. But of a surrealism like that of Tanguy or Dali, belonging to the hard trend so appreciated by Breton, Viñes only keeps the impulse which allows him to reach the pictoric surrealism for which is, together with Bores, the most representative. His evolution makes him then resemble a Picabia. Such as him, he doesn't wish to be an art theorist, though Picabia has consciously joined in the game of destruction of classical aesthetics. This pictoric surrealism leads the whole of these painters, from 1925 to 1932, to do a painting capable, like music, to live off its own substance. After having enjoyed the pleasures of this pictoric surrealism, true game in his youth, Viñes approaches fauvism. Viñes fauvist in 1932, is that not a paradox? In this field, Viñes know the paintings by Vlaminck, Derain, Matisse and also, maybe most of all, those by Braque. But the 1904 fauvism has lit very particular flames. It isn't for him a task of relighting the fires, but rather of recuperating the teachings for a new and very personal experience. This takes Fierens to, in 1932, express in les Cahiers d'Art: "Legitimate heir of the fauvists, a Viñes sprighted by an fervient and pure innocence, return a virginity to painting." He is, in fact, the heir, in the strict sense, in that he takes up fauvism there where Derain and Matisse left it; that is to say, a gleaming painting made of pure colours, which Signac and others—like Person—would amplify to pointillism. Viñes' fauvism is not defined in the same way. He is certainly a fauvist, and he will very particularly be so from the end of the war until 1965, but not so because of the pure colours, but because of the interplay of mixed colours. This particular excitement of matter in Viñes leads to values reconstructed and not instantly obtained by mere juxtaposition. In all, and-particularly in his great and blazing landscapes, Viñes is one of the last fauvists able to carry this experience through the whole of his work. But this interplay of colours, inscribed directly into fauvism but worked through in mixture and matter, Viñes doesn't deny the impressionism defended and developed by Bonnard. The latter's universe and the intimacy of Vuillard's work will be constant preocupation for him from 1939 to 1960. So, taking up Christian Zervos' somewhat premonitory words of 1930: "Viñes' work, in spite of its free rhythm, has accumulated successive knowledge" and we could add, of always renovated experiences. In the same period Picasso had said: "If there is anything to steal, I shall steal it". Thus acted this generation of painters. But Viñes' integration to the history of contemporary painting is not only defined by his adherences, be they temporary, to ideas or pictoric trends to define and forget his style, it is also determined by the painter's exclusions. Viñes was very much in touch with all the determinations and trends expressed in the capital. His osmosis with the literary medium, his frequenting engaged poets, intellectuals and directors has always allowed him to be very informed of what was going on and what was being done in painting. If Viñes doesn't participate in the adventure of abstract art, it's because this doesn't interest him. Nevertheless, he has been placed at the source of the debate due to hi visits to Maurice Denis, who lived the conflict in the relationship between abstract art and the will to restore the form. He also knew constructivism, the Stjil, the Bauhaus' impact. His proximity to Francis Jourdain allowed him to be an attentive observer of the evolution of decorative arts from 1930 on. He has known the abstraction of the 50s, then lyrical abstraction and all the movements of the 60s and 70s, with interest and without disdain, indicating each time he fell into another path. Ways that, no matter which, lead their authentic and sincere representatives to be placed at the exclusive orders of painting. A Bissier, for example, he has known as Menessier. A Hayter, friend by which he had a picture. A de Stael, above all. Beyond schools and quarrels, Viñes has always thought that the painting was the same. From Tintoreto to Morandi, in a way. This positioning Viñes has in relation to modern schools was the same he maintained towards the painters he admire and followed. Let us not speak of the Spanish school of Paris, to which he belonged, but of those he never encountered: Cezanne, with whom he maintains a life-long link founded on the method and nature of the search, more than on the painting technique. Alert and watchful reader of the "Sainte Victoire" or of still lives, he reconstitutes the intellectual progress the reforms and redefines space through a specific interplay of form and colour. Viñes painting is in no way Cezzanian in its expression. On the contrary, Viñes' creative process will many times be Cezannian. Then Matisse, whom he had so deeply admired. Inmense painter is his eyes, but who has left in him no influence. Bonnard equally. He who was for Viñes a master from so early on, opens for him the fountains of his own creation. If Cezanne had taught him the intellectual and intelligible way of painting, Bonnard has made dear for him the relationship between painting and nature, the apparently simple pleasure of the calmness of movement, of the environment, of the atmosphere. He finds, in Bonnard, an answer to the question of colour and value, of tone and of rhythm. Finally Picasso, the friend that will, all through his life have a particular influence over Viñes. Not immediately, in no way traced from the master. More like a look over things. Were they not both Catalan, though, it is dear, each with his temper typical of artists. ~ Viñes will probably never steal the images and writings in the way he genial friend did so shamelessly and happily did. But Picasso would undermine, in his youth. "lifting" some ideas from this intelligent painter, or even paint the two of them on one same canvas. one would start, the other would continue, and then both would recommence. Sometimes an odd third would join into the game. It is difficult to find the hand and inspiration of each. It must be taken into account that, in his way and through his 70 year long career as a painter, Viñes has all the major themes of painting: characters in situation, the women and little card players of his beginnings, the portrait with its psychological component, still lives, grand interior compositions and windows, nudes and landscapes. He has also been consecrated with skill to illustration, parallelly developing drawing, watercolour and oil. Only woodcut, because of its difficulty and particularity of its technique, has escapes him. It is now convenient to ask oneself about the lessons Viñes' work teaches, about the learning we can obtain from frequenting his pictures, from his work... Vines' work presents two opposite aspects: one real and material, the other immaterial and intellectual. They are two components mix, oppose each other or are superposed depending on the piece and on the period. Let us attempt to clarify them. In its material aspect, Vines' art is an art of composition based on a very regular and profound work. This composition which he has so often led parallelly to that of music he carried out, keep in mind the strength and mass of his subjects. This whole constitutes itself the structure, the backbone of his painting This internal organisation of the piece, through the determination of its dominators, its principal forces, more than through its drawing or outline, is what gives the picture coherence. But for this ensemble to be in equilibrium, a great mastery of pictoric thought and fulfillment technique. This process of material creation of the piece is Viñes' most Cezannian aspect. His painting is a meditated one which calls both to intelligence and to sensibility. In its inmaterial counterpoint, Viñes' art has been defined, since very early on, since 1926, as an art of presence: that of those women, somewhat bewildered who go past us in 1928, and of identity; that of those portraits of the war and of immediately after the war. Presence and identity have an influence on reality, even that of the background. Thus Vines' hipersensibility towards the atmosphere: that of a reunion, of a place or that of a room. Viñes' art will always maintain this surreal and realistic component which makes the atmosphere of a place touchable, granting it its identity in memory, determining the atmosphere and making the mood change. Viñes' art gives paintings that express the state of something: landscape in a state of something, leaning woman in a state of anguish, still life in the state of still life. And that is thus because the irreflexive components if its nature restore the magic of reality, with a poet's reactivity. Viñes has always loved this impalpable aspect of things, this unreachable part of beings this magical side of the world. Obviously this is pot the easiest way but Viñes' art has constituted, precisely, constantly treating these difficulties. "What interested me is the fugitive aspect I could catch", he would say at the end of his life, and, with regard to those moments of nun in the country he continues: "I like those things, so fugitive and difficult to reflect. It's the difficulty that stimulates me. It's difficult, so I attack. It's necessary for it to yield." For that to yield Vines calls up once more the painter's reality colour. In Vines colour is a major component. He is, above all and maybe, a colourist. But this must be deepened. For him colour is nothing in itself if it isn't combined with shape, for in Vines colour is form. And form is space. This practice makes Vines not be descriptive, as Chagall would be, more of an illustrator than a painter, or Dufy, when he gets lost at the end of his life. Colour in Vines' art, probably in Cezanne's manner, concentrates the painter's energy on the reasoned and structure of his picture, which yields little by little to the step, in the course of execution, to poetic improvisation. The use of this colour, so subtle in Vines, unfolds a gaiety, vivid and rich in consistence, for the eye. These colours' interplay, through superposed or joined brushstrokes, organises the pictures chromatism. Chromatism in Vines is a consummated art of precision, of levels and correspondences. It is often said that a musician's interpretation has colour. Vines' pictoric chromatism has an irreducible musicality. In its declination, in its development and in its exhibition is where Vines finds his identity as a painter and one of the traits of his originality. In Viñes: beyond colour, chromatism! For this contained chromatism gives him the picture's values, the values that the tones take up bring us back to the initial problem of form. Everything remains, and everything recomnences. Thus, form is space and the immaterial which have an advantage. Perpetual game of forwarding and perspective in Spanish. Space, air and light are the great components of Vines' landscape art. Because there we find the heart of the problem; because it's difficult and Viñes has never given in to easiness. In Viñes, the organization of space, as in Cezanne, results in a harmony of the picture's structure and the interplay of light on its structures. It's these movements of paint' success that allows air to run on the canvas. The materials' transparencies is such that it gives the painting life. The problem of transparency keeps Viñes busy for a long time. In no way like Picabia between 1926-28. It's not a question of transparency of images or sensations, but of light, of colours, and of atmospheres. All those unreal things found in Viñes from l930 on. Fierens' intuitive criticism of 1932, cited above, presented Vines' potential personality evolution: "Vines' art is a manifestation of the vital impulse. It is united in the whole, but the whole moves". Then what would the conclusion be if not that we are in the presence of an art of equilibrium where work and poetry have their place, where skill and the supremacy of technique do not, on their own, explain the secret melody of those works. So, beyond painting? Beyond painting we must return to the author, that is, to the man who has conceived ans caressed the canvas. Beyond Viñes' painting is the artist, of intellectual integrity, ot artistic honesty, of authenticity of life and artist's humbleness that are the most infallible seals bound to his work. When Viñes disappears in 1933, he leaves behind hum a life of painting in the service of painting.

Beyond Painting . Hernando Viñes Close Up, From Afar, Ashamed Tomás Paredes If "critic is the medium to establish contact with what exists", as Federico Gorbea points out in the preface to his translation into Spanish of Pierre-Jean Jouve's poetry, Ediciones Librerías Fausto, Buenos Aires 1974, I shall insist, from diverse viewpoints and distances, on approximating the reader, the spectator, to "what exists", here, in this exhibition, and a step further, by Hernando Viñes. And what exists, once the physical character has disappeared? A work, a task, image of "a life of painting in the service of painting", as Alain Gobin clarifies in the text dedicated to the author, in the catalogue of this revision of the hernandoviñism. But, what is it that singles this work out? The tones and the rhythms of his diction; having passed through the great trends which inform contemporary art, without exempting any, being saturated by them all, but able to allow himself the priviledge of having forgotten them. And still. The decided naturalness of taxing, with imagination, the fleeting snapshot of what occurs, of life in its happening Viñes doesn't discover, he presents, he dwells in space, he fertilizes, enchants the atmosphere, obtaining a superreality, demonstrating that the sun never goes out in the heart of dreams, as voiced in Fernando Verhesen's verse. To speak of Fernando Viñes is, more every day, to speak of colour, of his noble and fierce strength, of his lively cry; of imagination, pushed forth, swollen, germinated by reality; of improvisation based on experience, of the process, of the unrennounceable musicality, of harmony, of freedom... But he treats all this, in extenso, with rigor and delight, Alain Gobin, in his monumental monography Hernando Viñes, bilingual ed., Editions Isabelle Boisgirard-Association Hernando Viñes, Paris 1987; or, more succinctly, in synthesis, in the preface to this catalogue-book, at the end of which he insists on the convenience of shifting the attention towards the author—Beyond painting there must be a turn towards its author... Beyond Viñes' painting is its author...—, taking a collection that I willingly pick up. What was H.V. Iike? Above all sweet, gentlemanly. Tall, strong, a permanent smile; a harmonious movement, which made him get by at ease in a soft and silent dance of tradition. Adorable in manner, likeable, pleasant, fun; lucid, natural, unadorned, a character in spite of himself, with no other guide than life, than the life in art, in friendship, in generosity. Thus I found Hernando Viñes, the day we met, and in a subsequent visit. It was July fifth, 1990, Javier Vilató took care of organizing the appointment. Once past- midday, we headed towards his home on Boulevard de Montparnasse, in the same building where Antoni Clavé and Grau Sala once lived, in the ground floor of which once stood Castelucho's supply store, frequented by Picasso and by so many Spanish artists residing in Paris. He lived on the third of one those tall floors, with excessively high steps. We mounted the stairs, in half-light, amongst shadows and the whining of the wood, its squeaks. We searched, gropingly, for the doorbell, we made it ring, and after a while, a click! was heard from the other side of the wall, a light being turned on. Then the door opened, and before us appeared Viñes himself sheltered in his everlasting smile a bit like hiding in time, majestic in the reflections, with jovial, frank attitude, stretching out his hand, large and soft, after embracing Vilató, and inviting us to step inside. After closing the door, before being seated, more embraces and smiles. Vilató went forth with my introduction, as if nothing happened, as if we had known each other our whole lives; the began to talk and recall, while we were seated around a table, with a short runner, as demanded by the season. I observed, listened, anxiously, with no will to put forth questions, attentive to what I was hearing, as if carrying life back into history, before a procession of impressive list of names with history. Viñes was dressed in blue-grey trousers, white shirt, English chestnut vest and a matching tie. The room, of an ivory colour from the passage of time, had two metal shelves, one with loudspeakers and materials, indicating music was heard there, and the other with books. On the walls, two, three pictures, of small size, by the artist, and the mark of another two, which had been taken down, after having spent more than a lustrurn there; a cupboard, an armchair, with some newspapers, a large radiator and on top, a bowl... Behind the artist, sitting amongst us, a window, facing an inner courtyard, with trees, something quite common, in Paris. "What a long time without seeing each other, and it's great to see you!", exclaimed Viñes. Then Vilató tried to explain the reasons of our tardiness but, before finishing he was restrained by memories and new questions proposed by Viñes: Do you remember Castanyer, when we used to go eat at the "Catalan"? Yes, yes, of course Vilató remembered, and again a sort of competition, in the use of language, the account of a series of experiences, in which the names of Picasso, Oscar Domínguez, Manolo Angeles, Parra, Luis Fernández, Bores, Peinado, Cossío, Ismael de la Serna, Pedro Flores, Clavé, Buñuel... were repeated. "One day, recounts Vilató, we were broke and Matta insisted on our going for lunch with him, since he didn't know, I had to tell him so he wouldn't be surprised at our refusal, then Matta, to avoid suspicion, because he was accompanied, went aside and gave me the money, for me to pay". Viñes smiled and nodded his head, and movements of unrefutable satisfaction concerning those events. The mentions of his name are numerous in Luis Buñuel's memories titled Mi ultimo suspiro (My last breach), Plaza y Janés Editores, Barcelona 1982; on page 109 the director writes: "In Albatros Film Studios, in Montreuil, I had a small part as a smuggler in Raquel Meller's Carmen, directed by Jacques Feyder. Peinado and Hernando were also in Carmen—Spain compels— as guitar players. In a scene in which Carmen, accompanied by don José, appeared motionless by a table, with her hands on her head, Feyder asked me to, in passing, offer her a gallant gesture. I obeyed but my gallant gesture was a bit Aragonese, which cost me a resonant slap from the actress". And, what not?, to the conversation come the Montparnasse dances, the nights of past partie, and the liking of kicking up rows, of Domínguez and Buñuel, to the extreme that they came to be specialists and whenever they saw a dance was too quiet, the got to it to stir it up and then leave, though they didn't always manage to do so unharmed. Clave's good manners, who resulted a dancer of extravagance, the same as Viñes himself, musician as he was and brought up in a top musical atmosphere. At this, they began to speak of Ginés Parra, of his: particular work, of the fondness they felt towards him, and the difficulties he had to go through. Viñes recalled Picasso's excellent behaviour, with the painter from Almeria and Vilató, who: "just before being admitted into the hospital, I told him I was awaiting an American merchant; then Parra insinuated the possibility of my speaking to him, to see if he might buy him something. He gave me a package of photographs of his works, and I must still keep them in some drawers I have, in a furniture repository. But a few days later he was taken to the hospital and then nothing could be done. What I do recall is that when I was informed of his death, I went to the hospital and he was rayed out in his mason attributes". I tried to make Viñes talk to us about his painting, of his process, but he, with elegance and tenacity, once and again, drew his attention towards other points. When he couldn't stand it any more, he stood up and brought me the book-catalogue of his exhibition, in the Santander Museo de Bellas Artes, 1986, titled "Luz, color y poesía de Hernando Viñes" (Light, colour and poetry of Hernando Viñes), whose author is Jean Miermont Beaure, and asked me about Elvira González, for whom he felt great esteem. In the meantime Madame Viñes had made her appearance, only just to greet us, as if in a rehearsed act, she crossed the room, the scene, to say, very attentively: Bonjour!, us rising and repeating the same greeting, without making another gesture than a courteous reverence, She is recalled, with affection, by Luis Buñuel, in Mi ultimo suspiro: "Hernando, of catalan origin, and younger than I, was a friend for life. He married a woman whom I love deeply, Lulu, daughter of Francis Jourdain, the writer that closely frequented the impressionists and who was a close friend of Huysmans. Lulu's grandmother sustained a literary saloon at the end of the past century. Lulu gave me an extraordinary object that she had kept from that grandmother. It's a fan upon which most of the great writers of the end of the past century and also some musician (Massenet, Gounod) wrote some words, some musical notes, some verses or simply their signatures, Mistral, Alphonse Daudet, Heredia, Banville, Mallarmé, Zola, Octave Mirbeau, Pierre Loti, Huysmans, Rodin..." On May 20th 1904, in Paris, on Fourcroy street, close to the Arch de Triomph, Hernando Viñes is born, son of a Catalan man and a Guatemalan woman, Maria Soto, daughter of don Aurelio Marco Soto, who had been President of the Republic of Honduras. Circumstances which would brand her speech, her Spanish, with a French accent and bits of Ameridian sweetness. His uncle, Ricardo Viñes, exceptional pianist and composer, would be the one who popularized Erik Satie's music, who dedicated a piece to the boy when he studied violin, meeting, what is more, Falla, from the age of nine, and a great many other composers. In 1914, the Viñes family, fleeing from the european conflict, installs itself in Madrid, which is "when I begin to paint", at the same time he attended lessons at the Liceo Francés, and drew in the Casón del Buen Retiro and the Prado Museum. It's in this place where he is introduced to the works of Vázquez Díaz, Jose Grau, Gregorio Prieto and Celso Lagar; the "Salon de Arte Moderno" (Modern Art Hall), with Diego Rivera and Maria Blanchard's pieces; the extraordinary work of Manuel Abril in the Ateneo and the Daghilev-Satie-Picasso representation of the "Parade". Upon his return to Paris, in 1918, his vocation is already decided: "I shall be a painter!", not before receiving Picasso's blessings. In 1922 Miquel Villá (1901-l990) arrive in the French capital, and, a year later Pancho Cossío (1898-1970), who would become a close friend of his, and who Luis Buñuel recalls as: "short, lame, one-eyed, who observed healthy, robust men with a certain bitterness". In Paris they set up their amateur flamenco cadre: as guitarists were Hernando Viñes and Ramón García, who was his guitar teacher; Manuel Angeles Ortiz as the singer, and Elvira Viñes for the dancing. On June 25th, 1923, entrusted by the countess of Polignac, Manuel de Falla's El Retablo del Maese Pedro had its premiere, with scenery by M. Angeles Ortiz, Hernando Viñes, and Hermenegildo Lanz. Luis Buñuel, who would arrive in I 925, would direct a representation of the Retablo where Cossío would do the part of Sancho. In 1928 Viñes has his first individual one, in the Percier gallery, directed by André Level. Benjamin Palencia is already in Paris doing his materic paintings, the first of our informalism; that very year Francisco Mateos (1898-1976) who finishes some frescos in the Sorbone; to this place would also go on pilgrimage Jose Maria Ucelay, Nicolás Martínez Ortiz, and Salvador Dalí who would, in the latter, prefer New York and Port Lligat. In 1929 the Society of courses and conference celebrated an exhibition of "Españoles residentes en Paris" (Spanish residents in Paris), in the Villanueva pavilion of the Botanical Garden of Madrid. Among others were: M. Angeles Ortiz, Bores, Cossío, Dalí, Juan Gris, I. de la Serna, Miró, Olivares, Palencia, Pastor, Peinado, Picasso, Pruna, Ucelay, Viñes, and the sculptors: Alberto, Fenosa, Gargallo, and Huguet. The scandal was magnificent. The exhibition only lasted five days, but was a bombshell that drew all sorts of repulsions, mockeries, and some timid recognitions of geniality together, "in the young Spanish painters of the Botanical". In 1931 Viñes marries Lulu Jourdain, that tender and aged figure that recently crossed the dwelling like a majestic shadow. In I 934 the Viñes, "together with somebody we met on the street", would be witnesses to Luis Buñuel's wedding in the Parisian XX district mayor's of fice. Upon the fan Lulu Vines would give the director, signed by Edmond de Goncourt: Every being that doesn't have in his inner-most a passionate love for women, flowers, art object, wine or whatever, everyone that doesn't have a slightly disturbed vein, every perfectly balanced being, will never, never, never have literary skill. Strong hitherto unheard-of thought", notes the author of Un chien andalou, in his volume of memories. What sharpness in the memories, what strength in the invocation! I reply, not flatteringly, but surprised by his vivacity, in a man of eighty-six, fresh as a daisy. He smiles and answers: "Yes, I'm fine, but I'm beginning to notice the passing years, and even more since the operation. But, even so, I like going out every day and do the shopping". He was talking about the lung operation he had two or three years ago, in consequence to his liking for tobacco. I ask him about the poets, and he lacks the time to tell me of Valery Larbaud, Moreno Villa, René Char, Leon-Paul Fargue, Max Jacob, Federico García Lorca; Louis Aragon, Tzara, Paul Eluard, Juan Larrea, Max Aub; he recalls J. Fin's gaiety, who also played the guitar, the meals at "Le Select", "La Coupole", "La Closerie de Lilas", the gatherings, the exhibitions, the friendship. In I 93 2 he has a long stay at Palma de Mallorca, city for which he felt a strong yearning. He has an exhibition in Paris in May' after two months of enthusiastic acceptance in Madrid, his friends give him a farewell dinner, where many of the components of the "Orden de Toledo", founded by Buñuel and the top of our avant-garde artists, are seen, before the civil war broke out. Domingo Pruna, Hortelano, Pepín Bello, Santiago Ontañeon, Alberto Sánchez, Pablo Neruda and Delia del Carril, Pilar Bayona, M. Teresa Leon and Rafael Alberti, Gustavo Durán, Mrs. Dorronsoro, Pepe Caballero, Eduardo Ugarte, Adolfo Salazar, Alfonso and Luis Buñuel, Eva Thais, Lupe and Honorio Condoy, Federico García Lorca, Juan Vicens, Guillermo de Torre, Miguel Hernández, Acario Cotapos and Rafael Sanchez Ventura all attend the dinner in honour of Lulu and Hernando Viñes. The photograph will become famous, and the Equipo Crónica will use it, in I 975, as the subject for their canvases. After the war Viñes will not go back to Spain until 1965; before this, he collaborates in the 1964 book Asturias, as an aid for the Asturian miners, and in which we can also see: Picasso, Alberti, Peinado, Lobo, Alcalde, M. Teresa León, Orlando Pelayo, Jorge Semprún, De la Serna, up to sixty-six artists, writers and poets. In 1965, as the Director General de Bellas Artes, Romero Escassi, and encouraged by J. M. Díaz Caneja, he is proposed, and accepts, an exhibition in the Madrid Museum of Modern Art, providing him his new encounter with Spain, where he will travel in the latter, having an exhibition in the Theo gallery in 1969. Thus he obtains a series of contacts that will make his work be known through various exhibitions principally in the Theo, and in the Cellini, Sur, Sala Dalmau, or that of the Museum of Santander in 1986. From this date no great show of Viñes' work had been shown in Spain, except in the Residencia de Estudiantes, in 1993, where Ricardo and Hernando Viñes were honoured, relative to the avant-garde artist) movements in the entourage of the institution. In the catalogue for his Madrid exhibition of November 1965, there is a short prologue by George Besson, fervent and clear, that begins thus: "Under the empire of the art illiterates, restorers of what intends to get by a painting, it's good to run across an artist who, like the greatest among his elders, puts all his strength into painting and into pining for learning how to paint. Hernando Viñes belongs to that category of scrupulous workers—artists in addition—anachronistic species of a time where the genie and the giants wander...". Subsequently, another beautiful analysis, by Jose Antonio Gaya Nuño, which brings together the two texts dedicated to him by Christian Zervos in his "Cahiers d'Art" in 1928 and 1931 respectively, and which constitute a valid, accurate and succinct study of his work. I said, at the beginning, that I wished to speak beyond painting, of the man; here rest a few brush-strokes of a Viñes viewed dose-up, from afar, glimpsed, narrowing eyes in order to best reach the heart of his nature, and his dream, in the tale of a visit that was memorable, at least for me. I paid him another one the coming year, but he was worse, equally affectionate, disposed, natural, unaffected, attentive, solemn, and amusing. Amongst the jewels of his colour are hidden the virtues of hi drawing. I love seeing his auto-portraits, drawings, above all, with that honey look he never lost, yet disconcerting; knowing all, yet candid; fixed, tender, original, non-inqisitive, scented, enigmatic; fresh and transparent, like water, like air, like his smile, within arm's reach, different, elegant, distinguished. I could go on, still, telling of what I heard that afternoon, but his portrait, my impression, wouldn't change. I've just passed by the Foundation Giannada de Martigny, in Switzerland, where a great exhibition of Bonnard is being held, and it has made me think that "echoes and voices" can't always be told apart, and that, many times, we believe to be hearing echoes, where the particularity is confusing the dimension with the extension, and the noise with music. Where Bonnard makes nature and painting coexist, Viñes summons and seduces them; where Bonnard breaks away from colour to enrage them, Vines leads it to a most chaste and sensual nudity. He grew up familiarized with Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Sainz de la Maza, Rodrigo, Ricardo Viñes... He was held an atmosphere of sublime creativity, an intellectual medium of superior rank, and he lived it with charming simplicity and profit, with transparent structure, lacking all artificiality. In the presence of the charm of his attitude, one forgets everything, even the topics with which some obstinately try to describe him, he had nothing to do with any sort of cliche, nor school, nor place. He was born in Paris, where he would die on Febuary 23rd 1993, at the age of eighty-nine, but hisfatherland was art, enriched life, condimented by art and friendship. He had no intention of getting anywhere, he painted like he who breathes, and through that he not only lives, but is also furfilled. He was opening windows to life, forever. Small skylights through which we could look to learn how to live, delighting us, conforting us with excellence, time of all affection. I thank Javier Vilató for his disposition for that meeting, his friendship so often manifested; his work, soaked with honest value letting us participate in a wonderful world of dreamed shapes. And Viñes, the dimension of his presence, his honesty, his welcome, his distinction and this work, which is no more, and no less, than his life's testimony, a life for art, an art for life, that occurs with no artifice, natural, like light, like time, like a beat of reality, vigorized by imagination.

Timeless painting Juan Manuel Bonet For obvious reasons I've always been interested in the race of the frenchified Spainsh painters. If at the beginning of the century we had examples such as Francisco Iturrino or Juan de Echevarria, the French influence is further generaized during the twenties decade, era when most of the young Spanish painters in the peninsula directed the attention towards Paris, where the lighthouse was, obviously, Picasso. Among this youth, Hernando Viñes In Hernando Viñes' case Paris is basic, among other reasons because it is there he was born in 1904, and in his very 1 7th district he would die in 1993. Catalan by his father, and Honduran through his mother, Hernando Viñes was born into a learned medium. A fundamental figure in his biography is his uncle Ricardo Viñes. Pianist, composer, poet, Ricardo Viñes had a one on one relationship with Debussy, Erik Satie, Ravel, Odilon Redon, Leon Bloy, Albéniz, Falla, Deodat de Severac, Leon-Paul Fargue, Valery Larbaud... Francis Poulenc was a disciple of his. Satie, who the pianist played like nobody, and about whom he wrote admirable pages, dedicated the nephew, still a child, his "Valse maigre". His uncle, of whom he did a charcoal portrait in 1919, was for Hernando Viñes, as soon as he was old enough, a fabulous cicerone through the labyrinth of creation, in the Paris of the end of the second and beginning of the third decades. (One has spent years after Ricardo Viñes' steps, admiring him as one of the great secret names of the European between-two-centuries, speaking of him with Xavier Valls —who managed to contact him in the Barcelona of the forties—or with Joan Perucho, and wishing that some not tog far away day his complete diary will be published, that through what is seen in the two existing entries, could turn out to be a piece of reference on his time). The 1914 war caught the Viñes family in Bagneres de Bigorre, Pyrenees' town close to Lourdes. The next year they would go to Madrid where the future painter would begin his secondary education in that city's Lycee Français, frequently visit the Prado and the Casón, and would—as documented by a 1916 photograph—receive violin lessons. During those years their summer sejourns would be in Santander and San Sebastian. It is then when what we could call the future painter's Pyrenaic vocation begins, of which one of his favourite scenarios would be, with the passage of time, the French Basque country. At the age of 14, in 1918, Hernando Viñes would return, as always with his family, to a Paris that was beginning to return to normality. Decided to become a painter, he communicated this to his parents. As a consequence, his father took him to meet Picasso, a ritual visit that many other members of his generation would do in following years. Further on he would study with Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallieres, at their Academie d'Art Sacre, located by Saint Germain des Pres, at the Place Furstenberg, forever associated to the memory of Delacroix. It is from this period, concretely from the year 1922, that we have works by the apprentice painter such as Biblical Scene, Saintly Woman, or Christ on the Cross. His formation would be completed with his passage through the studios of the former cubist Andre Lhote, and the former futurist Gino Severini. At the Grande Chaumiere, Montparnasse academy he visited as did so many of his peers, Hernando Viñes met, in 1923, the woman who would become his future wife—they would marry in 1931—, Lulu Jourdain, Elie Faure's God-daughter, and daughter of the unique painter, writer and furniture designer Francis Jourdain, close, in his day to the nabis, reason for which his son-in-law, beyond cubism, would feel a growing admiration, something that can be seen in many corners of his painting. Ricardo Viñes, Francis Jourdain. Hernando Viñes will swim in other waters, he will frequent—through his close friend Luis Bunuel the surrealists, he will live the School of Paris, Spanish section. But the names of Ricardo Viñes and Francis Jordain: are absolutely basic in order to understand this, they will be the ones who will, in the end, explain a specific background, specific foundations of his painting, specific vital landscapes. Most of all they explain his way of living the century and its disorders, both the aesthetic ones as well as those of History with a capital h, from a certain calm, also from a certain timelessness. In the same way as the also Catalans Pedro Pruna—so close to the musicians: concretely the Groupe des Six—and Jose de Togores, like the fine Joaquin Peinado from Ronda, who was a close friend, Hernando Viñes followed a neoclassicism with clear Picassian influence in his beginnings. Some time later, another one of his interlocutors, Manuel Angeles Ortiz, would also join in of which those two coupled paintings constitute a wonderful example, both titled Reading, and both from 1924, with both figures, masculine and feminine, caught up in their books, figures which are the first a long chain of readers. (A paper from the same year also belongs to the same line: Dancer resting). In Hernando Viñes' case these neoclassical tentatives were preceded by others of a different character. Paths soon abandoned: the Modigliani expressionism of his Lying Nude (1921), the Cezannism of a Still Life (1920), with a fallen chair, the tempered cubism of his works in the Academie d'Art Sacre, the more decided still lives of 1922... Via his uncle Ricardo, Hernando Viñes participates, in 1923, in the adventure of the premier, in Paris, in the Princesse de Polignac palace, of Manuel de Falla's Retablo de Maese Pedro. Thanks to collaboration in the decors and the program, the apprentice painter got in touch with another one of the show's makers, Manuel Angeles Ortiz, with whom he shared his liking for flamenco. Three years later, a new show, this time in Amsterdam The Retablo..., key moment in the encounter with that avant-garde which we now know as the Generacion del 27, with the traditional and the popular, encounter for which .the first laboratory had been in the Granada of the previous years, where Lorca and his friends—among others, Manuel Angeles Ortiz and Hermenegildo Lanz—would discover, precisely from the hand of the author of that music, the world of puppets, and of the cante jondo. School of Paris, fruit-painting—let us remember the fabulous exhibition in relation to Eugenio Carmona in 1996, in the Plaza de España hall in the Comunidad de Madrid—, pictoric generation of 1927. .. Together with Francisco Bores—the author, what is more, of the term fruit-painting—, Manuel Angeles Ortiz, Pancho Cossío, Joaquín Painado, Ismael González de la Serna, Ginés Parra, Alfonso de Olivares and some others—for some time the future Vallecan Benjamín Palencia, the future action painter Esteban Vicente, those from Murcia...—, Hernando Viñes was one of the protagonists of this story to which we could add various titles, but that in the end is the story of the discovery of Paris and the cubism by a series of Spanish painters; the story of their fascination by Picasso, and let us not forget that some have spoken humorously of the existence of a clan, that of the "picassianos"; the story of his superation of the picassian cubism, by way of lyrism, and for some time of surrealism; the story of his continuous presence in a series of prestigious galleries; the story of the support they got from the great magazine Cahiers d'Art; the story of their presence in the pages of another one, more minoritary, the Litoral from Malaga, and specially in their gongorian number, cover-page of which is one of the last and most extraordinary works of Juan Gris. The story, also, of his diversion from individual paths, the return of some to the republican Spain, the majority compromise with the fighting Republic —Pruna and Pancho Cossío as primary exceptions—, of the taking in other names after the fall of that Republic, of the survival in the difficult Montparnasse of World War II and the German Occupation, of the continuity, already in the post-war, in a different context... Hernando Viñes would write years later that "cubism gave us all a discipline and rigor that did us all a lot of good. A structure persists in all of my paintings despite the freedom later acquired". Cubist, then, for a long time, though, as he would say himself, not uncompromising, Hernando Viñes would later acuse, via Buñuel, and as happened with other peers of his, and specially Pancho Cossío—studio partner during some time—, the impact of surrealism. Once again we must allow him to speak. "I was also influenced by surrealim, but I was never a surrealist to the core. I was always on the side. Little surrealism therefore, ...and a lot of painting. "The impact of surrealism, then. But lived in an unorthodox manner. Combined with the inicial picassism —Juan Gris mustn't be forgotten—and, most of all, with new interests—most of which would, in most of the cases, the one to prevail—by way of light and colour, of a re-reading of Matisse's work, and in general of the post-impressionists and fauves. In Hernando Viñes' specific case an "ingredient" which we can't find, or in much smaller dosis, in the rest of his partners: the reunion with the world, which, after all, he had never left, in the vital aspects, of the ex-nabis, Vuillard and Bornnard. Cubism, surrealism and, already, fruit-painting, are combined in the very interesting vinesque production of 1926—Still Life—, 1927—femenine figures, still lives, a Nude in the Bath, an alarming somewhat minorian Dream, a mysterious Crusade that seems to revive the sincerely Medieval world of the Retablo..., a Nude with Curtain—and 1928—a Couple, a ghostly Maid, the allegory of Music, a fun mixture of Apples and Children. In the paintings of 1929 and 1930 his proximity with Bores is palpable. Hernando Viñes is, in them, a poet of the modern world, of the ephemerally of things. Lightness and melancholy. The titles are very expressive: The Press, The Rain and The Bath are some of those from 1929, while in 1930 we are told of Reading the Paper, of Fashions—with the Torres Garcia type title—, of Games on the Beach (Bellas Artes Museum of Alava, Vitoria) or of those Winter Sports towards which the attention of those of avant-garde. This was all seen in some individual ones held in Paris, the first, in 1928, at the, then so important Galerie Percier. He got much support from the great platform of Cahiers d'Art, magazine founded in 1926 that would have a prolonged existence, the Greeks Teriade and Christian Zervos—for the latter, Hernando Viñes "has, like Bores, the ability to suggest with a queer joy the world of things"—, and also Paul Fierens. In Spain very few occasions of getting to know this work, only present, during those years, in the exhibition of paintings and sculptures of Spanish residents in Paris" in Madrid's Botanical Garden (1929), and in the one of San Sebastian on the Iberians (1930). Inflection towards 1931. Less and less cubism, and not a sign of the onirical, surreal temptations. More and more Matisse, Marquet, Bonnard, Vuillard. A far from traditional representation, but- more and more explicit. More and more windows—the window will become one of the recurrent motives of his complete works—, gardens, quiet interiors, nude women undoing hair or looking into a mirror, women observing the sea through a window, and among them Provence: the light of Nice —Matisse's Nice—, that of Saint-Paul de Vence. The very titles of some of the paintings from that key year, 1931, The Beach Umbrella, The Balcony, Window over the Sea, tell us already of a deliberate exaltation of the joie de vivre, the peaceful life. Luminous and balanced paintings that are directly joined to some of the more frequent images of the French painting of between two-centuries, of the impressionist, post-impressionist and fauve painting. Around that same period in one of the Cahiers d'Art articles, where Paul Fierens classifies, in 1932, Hernando Viñes as a "legitimate heir of the fauvists", the very Christian Zervos proposes "rediscovering Matisse". Andre Mason visits the author of Luxe, calme et volupte, and hears him speak, among other things, of what Renoir had told him, for example, of the effect of light through olive branches. Already on the verge of World War II, Bores would accompany, through the French Basque country, he who had always been Picasso's rival A photograph, we still ignore who took it, that forms part of the history of the best Spanish culture of this century: the picture of the banquet in honour of Hernando Viñes, celebrated in Madrid in 1936. Around the painter and his wife appear Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti and Maria Teresa León, Pablo Neruda and Delia del Carril, Alberto, Miguel Hernández, Luis Buñuel and his brother Alfonso, Jose Caballero, Pepein Bello, Adolfo Salazar, Gustavo Durán, Guillermo de Torre, Honorio Garceia Condoy, Eduardo Ugarte and the also "barroque" Rafael Rodreiguez Rapun, Juan Vicens, Rafael Sánchez Ventura, the film-maker Domingo Pruna, the pianist Pilar Bayona, the Chilean composer Acario Cotapos and the illustrator Santiago Ontañón, among others, including the mysterious Eva Thais, about whom Dionisio Ridruejo says, in Almost memories, she was a soviet spy. In Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño's words, thanks to this photograph, that would years later inspire the Equipo Cronica for a painting, Hernando Viñes will be for ever, apart from an excellent painter, "the man who congregated that marvellous anthology of Spaniards". Almost three decades without returning to Spain. Soon after the taking of that photograph the civil war, that would tragically change the destiny of those there portrayed, broke out. No work of circumstances by way of Hernando Viñes who then paints the colourist jewel which is At Rest (1937-1938). His compromise with the Republican cause doesn't allow, in any case, room for doubt: he was one of-the artists of the mythical Pavilion of the Paris Exhibition of 1937, he helped various refugees, participated in all of the anti-franquist movements of the post-war. 1939. His only daughter is born, Nina, future pianist, and would actively shed light on the name of Ricardo Viñes. World War II breaks out. Hernando Viñes paint at Saint-Jean de Luz, which will, with time, turn into his summer residence. 1940. He returns to Paris, to Montparnasse. New friendships: the very vuillardesque Emilio Grau Sala and Antonio Clavé, or Luis Fernández, at the antipodes of fruit-painting. Resistance, double identity: won't ever boast about the risks, the penalties, the anguish lived then. Not "circumstance painting". At times he finds, nevertheless, more agitated forms and more tragical than usual accents: the still life from the Black Market (1941-1942), the angulous portrait of a tuberculous neighbour—Madame Petit (1942)—, the series Here London (1943), inspired by the daily and hopeful listening to the BBC, the voice of the Resistance, the firm voice of the Free France, contradicted by Radio Paris, Radio Paris that lies, that "speaks German". But even in these precarious years, the symbolist order, the order of the orange lamps, still reigns. Still lives with apples or lemons. Flower pots. Landscapes from the re-found Saint-Jean de Luz and it's surroundings. Figures in front of a window. Reading. The piano. The garden. Some selfportraits, more than one, smoking. Hernando Viñes' world after the war is a definitely timeless. He shows his work with more problems than before for many things have changed in Paris. Even though he knows Bissiere or Manessier, he lives far from abstraction. In 1946 he participates in the Paris Spaniards show in Prague, where he doesn't go; his portrait of Alberta (1944), face-front and peeling, enters the Czech capital's National Gallery collection. In order to survive, he teaches flamenco guitar—first in an academy, then in his own home—, and does the covers for flamenco records. Among his few trips, one to Italy in 1954, an Italy where he is specially fascinated by Venice, and from there Tintoretto and his Scuola di San Rocco. Yellow Window (1956): in small format (46 x 33 centimetres), a wonderful urban Hernando Viñes, with echoes of certain nabis visions of Paris. Very intense yellows and greens, dialoguing with the pinks and mallows of the houses in the backgrounds. Window in the night (1957): in my point of view, one of Hernando Viñes' masterpieces. An essential night of symbolist climate, like beyond his location in the manuals is also surreal, suddenly another Max Beckmann, whom I saw not too long ago in Zurich, in the grand Kunsthaus exhibition on the German dialogue with Paris; like closer to us and beyond chronology, they are, thus, Alex Katz's admirable night-creepers in New York. Night, recurrent motive for this musical painter: Night Sortilege (1957), The Studio (1958) where his glasseson a neat table are the center, The Street at Night (1955) with its lit up windows, The Terace at Night (1970)... In 1965 Hernando Vines, aged 61!—Bores would take even longer—, his first individual exhibition in Madrid, framed in the halls of the Direccion General de Bellas Artes, below the National Library. The event was organised by his colleague and partner in his generation Juan Manuel Diaz-Caneja, who had said good-bye to his Paris joys in order to stay close to the two Castillas, and a younger painter, Jose Romero Escassi, at that time caught up in public employment duties. In the catalogue they would write one of their most constant interpretations, Georges Besson—who also reflected the event in Les Lettres Francaises—, and Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño. I have always found the latter's text, titled "Almost Half a Century of Hernando Viñes, specially joyful. In the opinion of the author of San Saturio's Santero, the painter has "distanced from Braque (...) and approaching Bonnard". He praises his "still lives of Spanish thought—even Zurbanesque—, but of a slightly French diction". In 1969 his painting has a new date with Madrid, this time at the Theo Gallery, with which he begins a year-long relationship, with products to be mentioned, such as, in 1976, the first monography on his work, with text by Antonio Manuel Campoy. Meanwhile the painter, following the advice of his always so close a friend Luis Buñuel, settled into an "appartment-watch-tower-studio" in the Torre de Madrid, building that, from its discovery, became the film-maker's Madrid headquarters. Both were fascinated by the views over the Sierra (Madrid's mountain-chain) —from 1966 on, there will be various pieces thus titled: The Sierra—, and about the very city, views which the painter will repeat over and over again. Saint-Jean de Luz—his operation-base—, its singular architecture, its beaches, but Ascain aswell, Ciboure —where Maurice Ravel is born—, Guethary—where Paul-Jean Toulet is burried—, Hendaya, Hossegor, Saint Pee sur Nivelle, Socoa, Urugne, are places whose names return once and again in the Vinesque work of the fifties and sixties. It is the era of his fascination, of his love for the greens and the yellows of the Basque-French landscapes through which he travelled on a mobilette—as his biographist, Alain Gobin tells—, with the painting equipment tied up in the rear. Fascination and love that will not keep him, during the sixties, from feeling comfortable facing other more spoiled landscapes; those of Bretagne, a Bretagne visited also by his peers, colleagues and friends Joaquin Peinado, Pedro Flores and Manuel Angeles Ortiz. From these Breton stays he brings back some memorably canvases, among which the saturated sea, bonnardically blue, that shines in Paimpol (1972), stands out. New incursions into the Midi aren't missing either, as witnessed in Provençal Light (Uzes) (1979) or Uzes (1986), one of his latest paintings. Hernando Viñes and Landscape. Gives him an ideal pretext, a cezannian architecture—the mountains nervings, the profiles of the houses and the sites, the artists of The Factories (1956)—for chromatic exaltation. Greens, yellows, reds—that of the Basque roves, but sometimes of the very landscape—, oranges, sea-blue, are the ever-present colours in this painter's palette, who is obsessed by the prestige of a colour that drives light of a painter, and that he enjoys observing Blooming Apple-trees (1974). Together with them, duller tones. Thus the more sober tones of the nights, in the middle of where the yellow of the lamps bursts through. Or those greys and pinks that dominate The turn of the trailer (1962), or in some subtle watercolours from that same year. The space that ended up belonging to Hernando Viñes, that "middle, warm, responsible area" to which the: always acute Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño refers as a timeless space. His dialogue is with the enchanted cycle he first discovered by the hand of Ricardo Vines—in 1993, some months after the death of his: nephew, a homage at the Residencia de Estudiantes would link the names—, afterwards by that of Maurice Denis, and lastly by that of Francis Jourdain, who he made a beautiful portrait writing by a lamp in 1950, this gouache portrait brings to mind the extraordinary portrait of Felix Feneon in the offices of La Revue Blanche by Vuillard, now in the Guggenheitn. I greeted him once—Pep Agost introduced us—, in the inauguration of the Casa de España, today the Cervantes Institute of Paris. I saw him in another occasion, on the sidewalk of the Grand Palais. I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better. He must have been a person with whom parler pinture (and music, and poetry) for hours. He once told Maria Fortunata Prieto Barral, who knew how to listen to him, as she knew how to listen to Luis Fernández, and who wrote the preface to his retrospective of 1983 in the mentioned Casa de España, that "the marrow, the mystery, art's undefinable is a conjunction in difficult equilibrium". His painting, who Juan Antonio Aguirre observed—as he did with Iturrino's—, had that mystery. He was a fabulous Spanish-French painter who knew how to solve on his own, with intelligence and sensitivity, the equilibrium of the conjunctions of his time.

Retrospective

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