mendive
THE REAL AND THE MAGIC
Manuel Mendive Hoyo was born on
December 15, 1944, in Luyanó, the same Havana neighborhood where Wifredo
Lam went back to live for a few months on his "retours au pays
natal" in 1942 and where he made his first "rediscoveries"
of that visual universe André Breton would later describe as an
untrammelled union of real and magical worlds. It is mainly a dock and
factory worker neighborhood.
The wooden house [where he was
born] was built in 1900 by his maternal grandfather Fermín Hoyo Espelusín,
a construction worker... This grandfather is the most direct family
antecedent for Mendive's artistic talent, for he was also a carver and
engraver. He would be sought for complicated architectural projects with
decorative work and other nonfunctional aspects, such as the "Mudejar
Palace" in the Plaza de las Ursulinas or the monument to General
Antonio Maceo in the Havana park of the same name. During the building of
the latter he was to be blinded in an accident. He was one of those
anonymous master-builders who from colonial times spontaneously shaped
"the style" of a city "without style" as it was aptly
described by Carpentier in a memorable essay on the architecture of Havana;
one of those eclectic "naifs" who were bold enough to invent
scores of rare orders, with unusual, fancy columns and capitals whose
design was hardly ever repeated throughout the kilometers of avenued
porchways dating back to the turn of the century...
But it was not only his family.
Mendive grew up in a crowded, tucked-away city neighborhood, with little
traffic, where there are silk-cotton trees on street corners and yards with
banana trees. Everybody knows one another. On Sunday men sit out on the
porches in their vests playing dominoes, people chat from house to house
across the street, and doors are left ajar, on a hook, so as not to have to
go and open them each time a neighbor wants to come in to the living room
or dining room or go through to the kitchen at the back for a chat, while
children play ball outdoors or mark the pavement with chalk. It is one of
those bustling Havana neighborhoods that is at the same time well-ordered
and family-oriented, by-passed to a certain extent by the traffic and
conglomeration of more hectic central areas. It is a neighborhood where
family and group traditions are kept strong.
In this neighborhood, the case of
a family like Mendive's, mulatto believers in santería or Regla
de Ocha -- the syncretic faith derived basically from Yorubá beliefs
-- is fairly common... believers don't see a contradiction with
contemporary Cuban life, in which they play a positive part. This can be
summed up in a strong image to be seen in houses in Mendive's neighborhood,
as in Cuban homes elsewhere: an altar to Santa Barbara-Changó or
the Brown Virgin of El Cobre-Ochún, flanked by portraits of Fidel
Castro, José Martí, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che and even Lenin...
Santería worship spans a
wide range, from the babalao and iyawó to the non-believer
who in a moment of desperation seeks "protection" or makes a
"promise", and the Catholic who unconsciously puts red flowers
for Saint Barbara and white ones for the Virgin of Mercy, not knowing that
they are the colors of African deities, or who worships a mass-produced
statue of a leper on crutches, without realizing that it is taken from a
parable of Jesus syncretized with the Dahomeyan god Babalú-Ayé and
not a saint canonized by the Church.
Ever since he was a child, Mendive
had shown a natural inclination toward painting and artistic things, and a
great love for animals which he always liked to have around him: dogs,
pigeons, rabbits, ducks, fish, a peacock, a monkey... He would pass the
time painting the altar to Saint Barbara in the living room of his home,
and also flowers, cityscapes and family portraits...
He studied up to eighth grade in a
state school. When the revolution triumphed he was 14. He enrolled in the
Villate Academy to study commercial art, which was in those times a base
for the poor with artistic talent. But he was only there for a few months.
His painting, his [1955] UNESCO prize for painting, the recognition of his
work, and above all, the new climate of support for culture from the outset
of the revolution, consolidated a decision on his part to devote himself to
art. In 1959 he enrolled in painting and sculpture classes at the San
Alejandro Academy...
Paradoxically, at the Academy, the
future painter was primarily interested in sculpture... His hands shaped
brown and black nudes in a sensual and opulent naturalism, with a baroque
concern for body movement... He did of course also study painting. He
worked on landscape, portraits, flowers, the human form... He liked to
cross the bay to Regla -- a town which has its own "virgin", Our
Lady of Regla, patron saint of Havana port, syncretized with Yemayá,
Yoruba goddess of the sea, and where there has been a strong presence of santería
and Abakuá...
... [Mendive] completely
identifies with what he paints. He is incapable of painting from a
distance, from the outside, not even as an academic exercise. This is very
important to understanding his later painting. He paints only people,
animals and things that are close to him, that belong to his creative
universe. When he is tempted to paint something exterior, he does so by
almost forcing it into his personal world, to the point that might seem
incongruous, though not in aesthetic dimension. This psychological-artistic
device, framed within his wide ingenuity, is what produced the strong
images of a cosmic rocket flying among Yoruba deities... or Martí on a
small rocking chair with Che and Oyá, the orisha of the cemetery,
who cuts the flowers..."
Gerardo Mosquera in Exploraciones
en la plastica cubana (Explorations into Cuban Art), Letras Cubanas,
Havana, 1983, pp. 232-245.
[ Home ] [ Up ] [ PINTORES DE HOY ] [ AMELIA PELAEZ ] [ WILFREDO LAM ] [ MENDIVE ] [ RENE PORTOCARRERO ] [ ROMAÑAC ] [ Servando Cabrera Moreno ] [ EDUARDO ABELA ] [ VICTOR MANUEL ] [ CARREÑO ] [ CARLOS ENRRIQUEZ ]
