Miguel Hernández is, above all, a great draftsman defending and praising his art with his latest collection Cambio y Permanencia (Change and Stay).
Estilos & Casas toured the collection accompanied by this artist. During this time, we could get deeper into his thoughts and his unique technique to be briefly described below.
A scholar who studied at the Pratt Institute in New York, Hernández and his best friend —a charcoal pencil— start a flight together, nurturing from the great world of drawing. His pencil strokes and well-done bodies are his signature. Behind this, there is a deep and strict study on human anatomy and careful observation of every movement characteristic of a body. This is how, by strictly applying these principles to his works, the latter started gaining national and international recognition, resulting in individual and collective exhibitions that have earned him some major awards.
Estilos & Casas had the privilege to join this great draftsman in his exhibition at the Calderón Guardia Museum opened on October 27 with more than 400 people. There we could admire his latest collection Cambio y Permanencia available to the public until November 19.
On the tour, Hernández told us that for him drawing is essential; it is "the essence of art: the only way to achieve any artistic expression." In fact, this concept is consistent in his works in addition to preserving the mastery of another important idea identified under the name of automatic creation.
In Classical Greece, Philostratus in his dialogue between Apollonius and Damis spoke of "pictures in cloud formations" and concluded that the observer formed such pictures with his mind while the painter had to use his own hands to imitate nature. Then we analyzed some paintings of Renaissance painter Andrea Mantenga, who painted clouds where we could identify human faces. This same idea is found in Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise of Painting, suggesting the power of "confusing forms" to elevate the spirit to new inventions. This was in fact the concept used by Miguel Hernández to come up with Cambio y Permanencia.
This technique is called fumage ('smoked', surrealist paint-ing technique invented by Wolfang Paalem and later also applied by Salvador Dalí), the use of smoke; that is, what Hernández paper or canvas first receives is smoke thanks to the use of a blowtorch or candle.
Miguel uses the same "volatile mark," to be changed, as he said, depending on the type of music he is listening to, whether it is day or night. Similar to the famous experiment on frozen water molecules by Dr. Masaru Emoto, in this case, smoke changes form shapes to air vibrations and the intentions of the artist. In this respect, with canvas touched by endless white and vibrant and velvet black, Hernández allows for the intervention of automatic creation and thus, activation of the imagination. Ready and using a charcoal, he starts drawing human bodies slowly yet smoothly moving in flames with free eroticism as if they were dancers of a free and spontaneous dance.
Nevertheless, not all drawings are intervened: those using no charcoal pencil, referring to galactic forms, and themes associated with brevity and transitory nature of life: the famous carpe diem. This is why conscious life is important, for may times we missed landscapes, words, looks, and smiles in front of our eyes, and we fail to perceive the essence of each one, of the simple yet basic fact that we are alive.
The works of Hernández are engraved in place and time.
We could see a kind of melange (combination) between the perfect use of human proportions influenced by fumage by Paalem, by art autre (other art) from Informalism, action painting, and finally by surrealism using pictures to express emotions... in other words, a simultaneous combination between academism and anti-academicism, and why not? In the past they may have been sacrilegious, but today, the works of Hernández are captivating and alluring, two synonyms reinforcing the idea.
Thank you Miguel Hernández for opening a small window so that we can explore your new collection and a world with no boundaries between visual expression and poetry, between poetry and life.
