Cristino de Vera

May 1st, 2018

It is France's Labor Day today and everything is closed.  Even our neighborhood convenience store, which was open on Christmas, is closed.  Ugh.  Good time to write my next post.  

As I said in the previous post, we stopped in at a museum in La Laguna devoted mostly to the work of a Canarian artist, Cristino de Vera.  Born in 1931 in Tenerife, he spent much of his career in Spain but donated a number of works to establish this small museum a few decades ago.  I would say that his work is characterized by a restraint in both palette and technique, no broad strokes of primary colors here.  But, at the same time, it showed a broad range of influences---I suggest below some that I noticed.  Finally, it seemed cerebral and mathematical to me.  In particular, I liked how he played with shapes and perspectives and light, especially in his still lifes.  Here are two: 

Now here are a couple of landscapes.  I like the graphic quality of the first---it calls to mind woodcut prints, but with an almost Asian sensibility.  I am ambivalent about the second because I find the skull imagery a little, well, unsubtle.  

Finally, the painting below seems to me almost a gesture to Maoist or Stalinist propaganda posters, with stout figures in drab, uniform clothing (although they seem pretty disillusioned with the revolution).  It is called "Juegos Infantiles," translated as something like childhood games.  It is strikingly joyless for a painting with such a title.  

 It was a very lovely museum in a nice location, and we were happy to learn about another new artist.