Introduction: Grediaga Fifty years' work by
To our luck, a retrospective exhibition has just been inaugurated under the succinct title Grediaga: Fifty year's work. Upon walking through the indoor and outdoor spaces of the Universal Art Building of the National Museum of Fine Arts and coming into contact with this exhibition by the universal Spaniard Kieff Antonio Grediaga is, one understands such sobriety. The key word is work. Paintings and sculptures of various dimensions fill the available spaces and display a noteworthy variety of modalities, which is evidence of intense and sustained laboring on the part of the artist.
In some outstanding pieces, charcoal and red ocher cover the vast canvases; in the others, metals, marbles and wood are the elements with which the skilful hands of the artist, trained since an early age in cabinet making, have succeeded in giving expression to a high-flying creative spirit
The canvases, covered the length and breadth of their vast dimensions by energetic strokes, reveal a structuring in which the geometric elements set the tone for the composition. The latter becomes seemingly over-filled with linear elements and shaded areas, which, in a sort of horror vacui, convey their expressiveness. The strokes move with a seeming freedom, though constrained by the geometric structuring which marks the composition of space.
In a recent piece titled "El amor brujo II", the abstract images emerge at the rhythm to which our eyes travel over the large surface of the canvas.
I believe that this piece, due to its being constrained, is one of the most accomplished among other similar ones, as, for example, "El grito de la nave", whose lines tend to project themselves beyond the canvas, perhaps totally intentionally, in keeping with the meaning of the title given to it by the artist.
These charcoal drawings were made the current year and are accompanied by several examples of pencil drawings on paper, which are generally sketches of what would later be sculptures, many of them on display in this exhibition.
I now underscore the title of the canvas - "El amor brujo"- for its allusion to one of the great Spaniards to whom Grediaga repeatedly returns. Memories of and allusions to Falla and Lorca permeate the work of the sculptor, symbols of that Spain for which his father, the militant cabinet maker, suffered prison and exile, and who named his son after the city where the tank in which he fought for the Republic came from. Kieff Grediaga is a Spanish artist to the root, though his life has taken him to various latitudes, the most recent Old Havana. Here, his Artistic Foundry Teaching Workshop of Havana is also the site from which pieces emerge to restore colonial works which have suffered the ravages of time, pieces forged by young hands under the wise teachings of the Master. Parallel to this, Grediaga has continued making his personal sculptures, many of a monumental format, and which now breathe the air of the Plaza Vieja and of the small square in front of the Museum of Havana; or have been exhibited for long periods in open spaces in Holguín or Santiago de Cuba; or are placed in more intimate settings.
Taller escuela de Kieff en calle Muralla 67,la Habana Vieja - CUBA
Exposición de Kieff en la Plaza Vieja de la Habana -CUBA
Alumnos de Kieff en el taller escuela JERGAde la Habana Vieja “CUBA”
Taller escuela de Kieff en calle Muralla 67,la Habana Vieja - CUBA
When Grediaga arrives in Havana, he has already gained international renown. Six decades of an intense and peripatetic life have taken him from his native Madrid to Portuguese America, to Hispanic America, to Canada, and now to the Caribbean archipelago. His dedication to the arts has been none the less agitated: he has been a successful cabinet maker in Madrid and in other cities, a restorer of antique furniture in several European countries, a professional tenor at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, a set designer and a luthier in Argentina, an enthusiast of architecture, and, always, one who works with tactile materials to reach the expressive volumes and planes enclosed in metals, wood, marbles. As I have mentioned, once and again throughout his life, the persistent memory is present of two grandees of Spain: Lorca and Falla, who significantly represent landmarks in Grediaga's aesthetic search: music, the stage, the word. The one murdered, the other exiled --both compatriots of the sculptor--, were alienated from Spain during the reign of fascism, but who, like Grediaga, have always been symbol and voice of true Spain.
Chronologically, one of the first works exhibited is "Jerga", dated in 1969. It is a large-scale piece --201 x 198 x 48 cm-- made on California red pine. An abstract work of a geometric nature, its mass, monumental and light at the same time, is cut by a central cleft which reminds us of the ones made by Fontana on his canvases. Such a cut in the surface of the large circle made on exquisitely polished wood provokes two immediate reactions on the viewers. One the one hand, its tactile condition motivated by this reduction of the surface of the wood to absolutely smooth planes makes it difficult to resist the temptation of caressing those surfaces. On the other, this central cleft not only divides the piece into four subtle curves, but also --and this will have further development in later pieces of diverse spirit-- establishes a sort of communication between the frontal and the rear spaces --or are they just the contrary? This piece, like almost all the ones exhibited --not to be absolute and say that all-- allows, or still more, provokes a multiple vision. Even when, like in this case, the artist tends to use planimetric elements, their handling and blending invites the viewer to move around it so as to have a dynamic view of planes and angles.
The execution of this piece is preceded by others of smaller proportions. The small-scale bronze "Tres torres" was made in his young years as an artist. It was made in 1956, when Grediaga was studying architecture; he then made a project for some buildings of the future. "Tres torres" was born from this project and is considered the first sculpture by the artist. The towers are variations on a theme and already point at what would become constant features in his later work: a respect for the potentialities of the material used, a rhythm of volumes, a presence of communicating spaces, a monumental nature in the conception of forms (which is not necessarily the result of the actual volume of the piece).
In "Reelección" (1968), for example, one can see how bronze becomes ductile in his hands, when he creates a form that ascends revolving upon itself. Other small-scale sculptures constitute a significant corpus of the handling of form which appears to move on a central axis, while the maximum possibilities of the material used are an important element for their appreciation. I now think of the various examples titled "Génesis" (1972), also in bronze, and of "Angelus Miserere" (1973), whose black marble not only seems to undulate along a vertical axis but also that, in the virtual trajectory, various pierced points create veritable communication among the spaces that surround the sculptures.
I would like now to touch upon another point that could cast light on the expressive diversity of the artist. While Grediaga has no apparent contact with the principles of surrealist visual arts, there are some revealing facts in his use, occasionally parodical, of the features of some artists close to the movement led by Breton. I think of Roberto Matta and the way he intentionally plays with the titles of his works ("La vanal de Venise", "Le vert tige des roses", for example), in addition to his rather unconventional use of every-day utilitarian objects, a resource, of course, adopted to the utmost by later tendencies.
All this comes to my mind when I view the works made by Grediaga in the 1970's: "Femme aux robinets" and "Cabeza, mano y grifos", both in bronze. But the closeness becomes more evident in the succinct figures of the "Tres geishas", whose unpolished black bronze grant the elongated figures a certain parodical nature. If I should return to Matta's titles, it would call one's attention that the Spaniard titled pieces made in black granite "White torso" (1976) and "Snow man" (1977). Upon moving into open spaces, he continues this sort of play in large-scale works and a marked juggling with materials and their colors. In "The turning point" (1980), which was exhibited at Columbus Circle in New York, he incorporates hydraulic elements to the monumental piece, culminated in its highest point (230m) --with a keen sense of the absurd-- by a "Stop" traffic sign. Upon viewing the small-scale figures harmoniously developed along a vertical axis -some of which I have mentioned due to their strong presence at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and whose textures underscore the tactile value of the forms of a soft foreshortening-one finds evidence of the early study by Grediaga of works by Arp and, above all, by Brancusi. Later works shall place the emphasis on compact volumes pierced by communicating areas in the frontal and rear spaces of the form attained in various materials, preferably marbles, or, above all, metals. Thus, the aesthetic family into which Grediaga is inserted becomes increasingly evident. From Brancusi and Arp to Moore, to Gargallo, to Chillida, to Díaz Peláez (to bring him close to the production of modern sculpture in Cuba).
I have thought of Chillida particularly upon recalling the three great pieces in steel that the Basque placed on the rise on the coastline of Ondarreta in San Sebastián, titled with diverse intention the "Peine del Viento": they account for the same spirit with which the artist from Madrid made his "Siete canciones populares españolas", which have been exhibited in various squares and open spaces in our city. They are significantly dedicated "to Manuel de Falla, whose music enriched my life". For these works, Grediaga worked on solid iron during the year 2003 to achieve pieces of large dimensions but of significant formal variants. "El paño moruno", for example, resembles a portico opened by the undulating lines that coil upon their open structure; "Seguidilla murciana" ascends from a base with combinatory straight and curved lines, as well as "Asturiana", "Jota", "Nana" and "Canción". "Polo" seems to be the emblematic piece of this series present in open space. Straight objects, curved sides, slanted fulcrums merge in a compact composition, which, however, allows the air to breathe, thus avoiding the suffocation of a compact block with no visual projection.
I have underlined some of the features reiterated in the most significant works by Grediaga. His handling of volumes is noteworthy, as is evident even in small-scale pieces such as "Cornisas y molduras" (1990), a sculpture made in bronze. Of a geometric conception, its closed volume is enhanced by the contrast in textures which range from areas of outstanding visual shine to hammered surfaces to contribute to their opacity. The conception, the title and the attention given by the artist to the most modest architectural components are evidence of the harmony that unifies the diversity of interests and activities of the artist.
This is, without doubt, a momentous exhibition, a testimony of half a century of painstaking work by an artist in constant search. It is seldom that one can grasp the variants that gradually emerge in the course of the work of an artist such as Grediaga. In his hands, different materials progressively come to life expressive in emotions and concepts of a rich search. We have been granted the privilege of sharing with him the emotion that every significant work of art has in store for us.
by Adelaida de Juan
Taken from the journal Revolución y Cultura No.4/2006
