 T h e C o l o r s o f t h e m u s i c As
Don Quixote put it (and not Cervantes, who was a crazy-one-armed-man who thought
he had written the best novel ever, with the only hand he had left): "There is
nothing bad where there is music." Music is the art of happiness, and the fact
that Tejuca's art was going to welcome music and musicians was just a matter of
time. His paintings are happy as reflected in his recurring series about the
circus, surrealistic creatures and women of-dreams. Another important fact is that if a list of joyful musical styles was ever
made few, if any, would score higher than Cuban music. Though it is known that
joy is not synonymous with happiness. Happiness may also arise from sadness, as
the sad rumba song; "Lagrimas Negras"(Black Tears) proves. Happiness is
deep-hearted joy, tranquility, always enjoyable. The happiness of Cuban music,
which fades with the last notes, was calling for a way to become everlasting and
there is where Tejuca's brush strokes make magic with their feast of colors,
guided by his spirit of an avid and good-natured child. There comes a time in
the life of an artist when he realizes that things always happen for a reason.
For many years now the main influence on Tejuca's work has come from the Jewish
Russian-French painter Marc Chagall. Both artists' paintings are deeply rooted
in their memories of childhood and the most authentic traditions of their
peoples, trying to draw from them the largest amounts of happiness possible.
Between them there is a spiritual coincidence rather than a resemblance. There are also some sorts of coincidences with Eduardo Abela, another Cuban
painter who also was searching for the so-called "Lost Paradise." The happiness
of Chagall's paintings never concealed the relentless persecution suffered by
Jews in Czarist Russia, the same way Tejuca's musicians never belie the
countless drownings of rafters in the strait of Florida. Tejuca's work is not an
escape, but a painstaking search: the search for happiness when there seems to
be no hope. Tejuca's musicians persistently announce that happiness with their
trumpets, their loving violins and their wavy pianos filling the air with some
magic music we try to grasp intuitively as we watch them. His musicians announce
the arrival of happiness, but one can never truly find the origins of that
happiness without tracing back every brush stroke into Tejuca's pure soul. Enrique Del Risco Translation: Francisco Nieves |
The Art of Armando Tejuca |