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Martín La Spina or the maker of butterflies’ paradox |
It wouldn’t be proper to approach Martín La Spina’s art work without contemplating his deep and permanent search for universality within existence, without taking into account how he seeks for everyday spirituality. He creates worlds that are sunk under a constant magma, guided by his own problem with eternity. These worlds come from an indefinite and wombish substance where all the beings can drink from it mixing their own essence with a still movement that faces the same light that gave them birth. It is the same light that makes colour possible as a raw material for painting. A humble homage to the creator thanks to the timeless power of image. A formal and conceptual spiral leads him relentlessly towards the idea of time as a continuum where the review of the great western classic painters. It is a licit review of the classics if we consider them as universal icons of images, taking possession of them as a cultural shape. He takes from Hieronymus Bosch his Dantesque sense of the millennium, from Velázquez the space abstraction, from Michelangelo the strength of contortion, from Leonardo the mystery of human face, from Ingres the ascetic erotism, from Rafael, the green and pink colours, from Chagall the passion for red colour and blue brightness; and the double image of Dalí: his love for mass culture and the analogy of surrealism. La Spina takes again to the path of figurative tradition and the material knowledge that western painting has lost through different vanguards. His purpose is to recover the Platonic idea of art as a way of seeking universality from individuality. An irreverently respectful approach to the classics that runs away from conventionalism but at the same time, uses conventional images: this is the apparent paradox of someone that transforms nomadism into a steady way of approach to the world. It is also the maker of butterflies that they will be dead the following day. The balance of chaos, the magic of art as a way of lasting forever.
The balance of chaos, the magic of art as a way of lasting forever. Aïda Navarro Barba Art historian for the University of Barcelona
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