Brancusi in the work of Plácido Fleitas : suggestions, influences and confluences

              of as a multicultural platforrn acting in
iho European peripher\' with a clearlv
different sensibility; it tends lo include,
tangentially, the African and the Latin
American in a tricontinentality that
enables it to belong to a virtual and
plural communitv, that isn't exclusively
Spanish or national.
In the city of Las Palmas we have a
hindú communitv that is almosl one
liundred years oíd, that has maintained
its traditions and kept them alive, but
that has never really wanted to share
them with a society that bv dav is their
client for cheap radiocassettes. Perhaps
because they have not produced artists,
thinkers, poets, as they are merchants.
Commerce can kill anylhing remotely
multicultural. There are floatiiig
populations of Coreans, Chinese,
Taiwanese, Japanese, who are posted
here to attend their fishing fleets. There
is a palestinian communitv, a jewish one,
a moroccan. These different nationalities
have their residence permits in order.
And then, there are the Africans, who
have not settled in the islands, who come
and go, legally or illegally, who we watch
in the streets selling bad tourisl art.
On the plus side of our cvaluation we
can put the exceptional cultural and
historical relation that we have with the
Saharaui people, an intensely einotional
link, who are beyond doubt the africans
we best accept. Despite all of this we are
not a multiracial society. Whv? In part
due to the fact that the racial groups
and communities in Canarias don't tend
to articúlate and project cultural
messages. ñor do they rnanifest their
differeiices in a intellectual and artistic
dimensión. This limitation of
multicultural dialogue is unhappily
compensated bv a series of diplornatic
cultural iniliatives, "weeks of", "the
cuisine of... ".
F'urthermore, the canarians are
living through a belated phase of self-definition
and self government, that
implies the development of
decenlralization contemplated in our
autonomous charter. A great deal of
energy is employed in long and difficult
State negotiations, and in the drawing up
of legal docuinents and administrative
surveys necessary for the creation of
organic local, regional laws. All natural
conditions theoreticallv favour a
multicultural Ilourishing in the islands
yet creative energy has been displaced to
more pragmatic ends. For the time
being, the multicultural is merelv
another option on the agends of that
vaguesl of finisecular realities
announced in european cultural centres:
"cultural plurality'.
The relation between the islands and
the central administration has never
been easy, and frequently the historical
peripheral marginalism of the islands
brought semi-colonial rule. Besides, the
geographical and cultural distance of
european peripheries breeds
strange hierarchies with peculiar
tendencies.
Cultural and ethnic difference
becomes an obsession, and this creates a
certain "identity-mentality" that often
ignores other more fertile possibilities of
self-definition. Tricontinentality is a
paradigm of all the contradictions found
in the defense of multiculturalism in our
atlanlic world. It has a blinkering effecl
on our idea of the reality of relations
between Canarias, África and Latin
America. They are sporadic, infrequent
and belong more to history than to
actual time.
One of the major problems lies in
our condition of "perpetual colonials',
of a society that is submitted to certain
markels that forcé us to produce certain
specific goods to the detriment of
commercial, economic stability. We lack
the stamina and the serenity as a race to
open the gates confidently to
multiculturalism, for we have been
dccimated by emigration, the
devastating succession of monocultural
regimes in agriculture, and now, we are
the semi-willing victims of a kind of
subliminal colonization enforced by the
tourist industry. We are not on equal
terms with Europe, and we can't reject
certain offers made to us. These
deterininant forces drasticallv interrupt
any process of self-definition, and
genérate a syndrome of dispersión.
There is an environmental sensibility
presently gaining momentum that may
be able to redress the balance of tourist
trends in favour of greater cañarían
quality control, yet its effects won't be
appreciable till the next centtiry.
Our free evolution towards África
has been curtailed initially by adherence
to the European L'nion. We have lived in
a culture of moral and spiritual survival,
even up to this day. colonized as we still
are by multinational econíjmic iiuerests
that have crealed a hybrid tourist
culture. Tourists do not come to know
us, not even to visit. They buy and
consume a vacation package. If we
hardlv have cultural communication
with the germans, scandinavians and
english that come to us by millions
yearly, how are we going to have it with
África?
BRANCUSI
IN THE WORK OF
PLÁCIDO FLEITAS
SUGGESTIONS, INFLUENCES
AND CONFLUENCES
BY ÁNGEL SÁNCHEZ
Few of these interested in the local
tradition of (Janarian twentieth century
Fine Arts would doubt the fact that
Plácido Fleitas, (1915-1972), should be
considered the first abstract Sculptor of
Canarias, although his abstract sculpture
only occupied the last two decades of his
life. His chisel had the power, and the
pioneer's submission, to perform the
journey from classical sculptural volume
to the new avant-garde valúes of
iniaginary forms.
In an artistic milieu hardly at all
devoted to sculpture, and where
tradition crowned as great master the
figure of the religious image-maker,
Lujan Pérez, we must acknowledge the
fact that Plácido Fleitas liad a rough
time. Despite the lack of opportunities,
of a certain credit that he enjoyed in the
rnainland, of publicity coverage, and
perhaps. owing to the isolation that
marked his character, as indeed happens
to the archipelago, it has not been easy
to establish his reputation as a famous
Sculptor, having become resigned all of
US to accepting him as a peripheral
figure. This lack of lame was also
something Fleitas assumed, when he
Ü
dared to be modern in a conservative
world, during the long night of
francoist Spain, that only required
genre sculptures that we could describe
as vertical-trade iinioiiesque,
instantly soluble in triviality and
oblivion.
Plácido Fleitas never trembled or
lost his dignified touch with the chisel.
We can consider him to be the greai
modern Sculptor of the twentieth
century in the dimensión of the
cañarían world.
However such merit and such
excellence don't necessarily lead to
national recognition and International
glory, which is of course, being known
in more than one continent.
Nobody is a scnptor in his homeland,
we could say, paraphrasing a similar
proverb that denounces a manifest
injustice. The appreciation. cataloguing
and critical projection of his work is still
pending, after the tedious distortions
that vesterday's and todav s criticism
have broughl to bear on his conce[)ts,
not to say, on his disperse oeuvre.
present in European and American
collections. it won't be possible to
fatliom the extent of his inspiration,
revealing the universality of his
work. This has proved heretofore
impossible.
It was no mean feat to get going
during the postwar. Obviously the
tenerife art magazine "Gaceta de Arte'
did not pay attention to that young
twentv vear oíd man who held his first
exhibition in 1935, in Las Palmas, using
a salón that had been decked out as
exhibition room right by the Plazuela de
las Ranas. Had Gaceta de Arte
continued to appear after that fateful
1936, perhaps the editors might have
had time to concéntrale on the
production of that young man who was
at the time younger than the most
promising stars of the local scene, Osear
Domínguez, the surrealist and Felo
Monzón, ("indigenista"), to whom the
inagazine, or at least t^duardo
Westerdahl's eye. did pay sonie
attention. Or maybe not, for we know
that Eduardo Westerdahl didn't foUow
the artistic development of Fleitas's
career until 1965, when he was
chargcd with the catalogue of the
former's exhibition in ihe Municipal
Musetim of Santa Cruz de
Fenerife.
It was perhaps possible also, that
Osear Domínguez himself, who Fleitas
visited, took an interest in his work and
contacted Westerdahl urging him to
consider it, as Fleitas was a shv and
introspective man who did not reallv
devote anv time to his commercial or
critical promotion. Had there been
effective interest for his art, Fleitas
might well have ranked alongside Hans
Arp. Picasso, Ángel Ferrant or Joan
Miró, who all had photographs and
articles on their work published by
"Gaceta de Arte''.
Putting speculations aside, let us see
what really likens Fleitas to Clonstantin
Brancusi, the rimianian scuptor who
settied in Paris, and who was already a
famed artist in the 1920's; he was an
artist who made an enonnous
contribution to renovating the concept of
tridimensionalitv. That scupture was
liberated from tedious realist
verisimilitude owes much to the
intuitions and decisive altitudes of
Brancusi. Biomorphic rather than
anthropoiTiorphif' in spirit, Brancusi's is a
sculpture of rhythm, of impulses that aim
at achieving máximum purity of form.
The laconic simplicity of Brancusi's
aesthetic form was much appreciated bv
Fleitas, given the evident similarities
between both sculptors' syntax.
That is w'hy Brancusi in Fleitas is a
subject awaiting analytical study. The
few studies devoted to the cañarían
Sculptor refer to Brancusi only in
passing. as a possible influence on that
second-epoch. abstract Fleitas. The same
Sculptor who gives up the figuration of
ethnic métissage in the islands, in
Tirajana stone, (Grand Canary), and in
Tindaya stone, (Fuerteventura), and
choses to concéntrate on the dvnamic
evolution of those masterful rhythms
that he receives from tradition. He is a
Sculptor, who, following the materials
cue, searches thought in the grain of the
stone. He discovers new, surprising ideas
as a result of polishing wood, easily
adapting the language of the abstract, as
if it were a case of sheer mental
affinity.
Some of the critics that have written
on Brancusi in relation to Fleitas teiid to
qttote the rumanian's ñame as just
another influence. (Corredor Matheos.
1964). or if not suggest that such a line
of ¡nvcstigation is futile. (Lázaro
Santana. 1973). The time has come to
determine whether there is indeed
something of Brancusi in Fleitas. if the
question is easy and perhaps futile. and
what did in fact the cañarían artist
trained in the Escuela Lujan Pérez in
Las Palmas take from Brancusi during
the two vears that he lived in Paris,
(1951-52). on a grant from the french
government.
Accepting that Fleitas was .sensitive
eniotionally and physically to whatever
influences he experienced during his
parisian stay, can we claim that his
leanings were primarily towards the
character of Brancusi's work? Can one
talk about a differentiated influence that
was dominant over other visually
identifiable borrowed traits? The answer
is ves. An objective coniparison
manifests that a clearly identifiable área
of his work, as from 19,52, is evidently
brancusian in natiire. although we can
siinultaneously consider it as secondary
if we also take into account other
contemporary visual referents also
present in his work. The proof lies in the
victory that Fleitas scores against the
void, that central gap in his works,
though we mav perhaps tliink that the
formal debt to Branctisi is nothing more
than a slight family resemblance, or a
series of parallel advances. that enable
US to discuss Hans Arp, Joan Miró and
Henrv Moore.
The standardlv recognisable
Brancusi is almost alwavs a self-enclosed
volume. of soft contours and enigmatic
severings, where the phvsical origin
sometimes stands out; the synthetic lips
of the Negra Rubia, (1926), (Blond
Negress) or the archaic, cycladic.
-thev ve been called-, eves of Mlle
Pogany, (several versions since 1912),
that Mona Ivisa of the twentieth century.
Brancusi is also the tradition of the
plintli and pedestal, with three or four
elements on which he pla(«s the final
piece, as a dish served on a hierarchical
surface. Inducing an interaction almost
unknown till then, the marble, wood or
stone elements signify a thcoretical order
typicallv brancusian, that múltiple
sculptural plinth that contrasts in
materials. colour and tactile sensations
with tlii! erown piece. Specialists have
sei'ii in tliis stvic. "...tlic most utterlv
revolutionan- way of thikiiig sculpture,
wliich is an esseruial charactcristic of
Braiicusi \
W(> have lo imagine Fieitas in ono of
thice eolleclive exhiliitions that in Paris
and Brussels might have allowed him lo
sludy ihose brancusian pieces ihat
developed the kindred model. Ferhaps
iniages sculpted in oak, ¡JÜ Quimera.
(1915). the Rey de Reyes. (1935). might
have helped him to vi,suahze that ovallv
perforated phnth at the same theoretical
height as the biomorphic head of the
nientioned works. when not as model for
the styhsed base that acts as phnth for
Recién Nacido. (1926). (Just Born). hi
this kind of base there is already a
strong indication of liow Plácido Fieitas
is going to evolve.
The formal artistic influences tend to
make up two different groups that the
scidptor develops in the 1950 s: the firsi
in quebracho wood, a hard material that
came from the argentinian Chaco and
which could be fotmd in the Puerto de la
Luz. the port of Las Palmas, among
other nutritional imports that Perón sent
to the islands bv wav of post-war
cooperatiüfi. In figures such as (juto^
(1952). and its series, the oval half-moon
that dominates the sculpture s
voliime is suKgested. (-rowned with
zoomorphic crests and a round central
perforation. The clegant curves that
Licitas produces in all the sculptural or
pictorial works tfiat date from that
epoch. repeat the oval (;omposition in a
series of elliptical hollows. with a
descending axis of incrcasing diametre
as it progresses outwards, iu at least six
known works.
Without overlooking in these
characteristics a certaiu influence from
Joan .Miró, especiallv in the more Hans
Arp-like facial fealures, we can otherwisc
safelv State thal in his phvsionomies the
imprint of Brancusi is decidedly clear. An
elliptical stvie ihat Licitas wont
abandon. allhough he will start lo
smooth out anv roughnesses and will
model transiiional curves that produce
streamlined surfaces. This happens witfi
the geomor[)hical sha[)es sculpted in
sandstone that he inade during the 60"s.
erroneouslv attributed to the influence of
1 lenrv .Vloore. Such attribution obviates
the slow process of self-definition that
rnarked Licitas s creative career. and
these works are the result of a personal
synthesis. of a svmbolic economv. that
entitle the sculptures of the period to be
esteemed as original, and not excessivelv
indebted to Henrv .Vloore. The pritnacv
of the central \oid or hollow, is a
culmination. as Lázaro Santana would
say, with dramatic and magical elements,
for, T'leitas is more interested in the
hollow as an invisible volume rather than
as a void".
Another fialf dozen works. (the
numerical vagueness is just another
consequerice of the chaos that still
surrounds the cataloguing of his work),
reinforce tfie suggestion. Those
Sculptures in ebonv. (19.58). with an
oval contour. that punch two
syminetrical oval fiollows in the piece.
running parallel or super-imposed. have
a vcry evident brancusian look aboul
them, as all the work in wood from that
period.
The affinities aren t apparemly
limited to a mere visual comparison of
his 50's and 60's series with the
pedestals and other parts of Brancusi s
sctilpture. as we can glimpse froiti the
photographs that the rumanian artisi
took himself in his studio, which has
been carefullv restored in the neigh-bourhood
of the (Centre (Jeorges
Pompidou. Brancusi in Fieitas can also
be seen in a broader coiitcxt of mutual
sources of inspiration. Both sculptors
were fascinated bv priniitive Black
African sculpture, a fascination that
seized many great beginning of the
centurv artists to develop into a vast
body of influeiu-e later on. There is a
brancusian figure of 1914. his
Carvatide. hieratic and self-conlained.
whose spirit Mellas seeins to reproduce
in one of his works. the iniage of an
african man whose feet are very
reminiscent of Brancusi.
Anvhow. both men refused the label
of abstract sculptors. The rumanian
arlist expressed il like this: "Those who
sav mv works are abstrae! are stupid.
for whal ihey cali abstract is realist, for
realitv is not tfie exterior form, but tfie
idea, the essence of tliings."' (.'?). Licitas
also incorjjorates this idea into his
praxis, and there are works bv him that
endorse the biomorphic theorv, bevond
the autoinatic descri|)tion of the tract ,
lliat will prove so SUCÍ'CSSI'UI in the
descriptive field, allhough conceptually
(•(mlested. For example. there is a work.
(in ebony or quebracho wood?). whose
solé graphic testimony is a pholograph
that shows it in the studio of the Calle
Torres. Las Palmas. (1973). h is a
volume oval in shapc. and with parallel
oval hollow insido.
The work endowed with lips. a pair
of arms and feet, like two inunense fins
that prop it up. makes us think that we
are beholding a métis fetish of a given
canarian ethnic type. that Licitas had in
a previous period popularised. and also
certain perceptible african suggestions.
einphasized bv the black hue of the
wood, (an innocenl kind of syrnbol in
Fleitas's essentialism).
Lndoubtedlv Fieitas succumbed to
the temptations of influence that certain
decisive sculptors of the early twentieth
(•entury posed. We have to recogni.sc that
thc.se stimuli enabled him to discover
morphological realities of nature.
already visible in other artists like
llepworth and .Nicholson. Let us accept
that what is perhaps most brancusian in
Licitas is that "tournant mysli(]ue", that
he was able to adapt without rnimetic
harshness. Brancusi. somehow, was
within fiiin.
PEDRO
GONZÁLEZ
IN T H E DEEP
OF T H E WOOD
BY CARLOS DÍAZ BERTRANA
The series of paintings that. with the tide
•The Viood". have been presented b)'
Pedro (González in Las Palmas, (Galería
Manuel Ojeda), and in Tenerife, (Círculo
de Bellas Artes), dispel any lingering
doubls as to the ftinction of anccdoic in
his art: rnerely iiTelevant Whether it is
the sea. llie wood, an interior, a still lile,
a portrait or abstraction. the paintmg ol
Pedro González adapts the subject to a
structural concept of pictorial space.
as