En los lienzos de Miguel Marina...encontramos un contenido netamente vasco. Pero la obra en sí, posee un amplio espíritu progresista y universal.
Alberto de Donostia, El Telegrafo, Ecuador, 1956 In his Palomares series, Marina has suddenly found a subject which has aroused in him an intensity that forces him to commit himself. In his anger at a specific military event with enormous political and social implications, he explodes. He merges the image of the bomb with that of the phallic male and forms scaly mechanistic-serpentine human figures partly surrealist, partly Guernica-Picasso-esque which are physically forcefull and emotionally expressive yet retain the icy control of intellectual bitterness. These truncated automatons still maintain the formality of his earlier figures but they evoke a much more direct communication, an anger which while vibrant and intense is still harnassed by will. Richard Ames, Santa Barbara News-Press, 1968 Marina's delicate paintings are medieval in feeling and feature a brilliant range of hues and a vast variety of moods. Small wood panels, vibrant with the sunlit colors of his native Spanish birthplace, form the basis of the special showing. The works are designed for the wall or shelf display and, being weatherproofed, can also be hung on chains in the open air. Larry Palmer, The Los Angeles Times, 1970 Marina's paintings have the formalism of early Christian painting. The arrangement of figures is the same one finds in byzantine and romanesque art. Colors are quite limited to the almost primary reds and greens and blues of stained glass windows, with lots of rich almost shining black. There is the simplicity of folk art combined with a wealth of intellectual artistic conceits. .... Not only is one struck by a feeling of basic sincerity, but one also is aware of a continuing development of thought, a steady growth of expression which only comes in a serious artist. The latest paintings have a greater intensity, the contrasts are firmer, the complexities deeper, the iconography more meaningful. The combination of ancient and modern, the almost deliberate evocation of a variety of different epochs is seen as no mere gimmick, bat an essential part of a view of life in which one deliberately tries to fuse important single images into a classic form. Richard Ames, Santa Barbara News-Press, 1972 La obra que presenta [Miguel Marina] es varia en sus morfologías, distinta en sus pensamientos, y así no se puede encuadrar bajo un común denominador, pero es ella toda válida en cuanto a su aliento, curiosa de las cosas, pesquisidora y sensitiva. Informaciones, Madrid, 1973 There had always been recurrent images in his work of Basque landscapes, of boats and buildings, of little gardens over which hovered angels like wasps buzzing in and out of the action. But now Marina decided to spend his final years concentrating on exploring and re-exploring exactly what his Basque heritage meant to him and why. He sought to select which of his individual memories should be enshrined like precious jewels in the most luxuriant dark blues and blacks. A particular vegetable or fish might represent an innate mystery of life. It was a passionate search with some unexpected joyful surprises as the icons became more and more specific, more and more personal, more timeless, real. The colors glowed with ever greater intensity. Though everything remained physically small in scale, there was an ever increasing sense of space. The very last finished work recalls to life the fishing boats inscribed with the names of the six other Basques with whom Marina escaped in June 1936 [Ed. note: August, 1939] to a new world. Richard Ames, Santa Barbara, 1989 |