Francisco Bernal from Camagüey arrived to the City of Tinajones after a long period on Spanish soil to honor through the brush and canvas the memory of his loved ones with the personal exhibition El tiempo es oro (Time is gold).
The exhibition located in the Galería República 289 was available to the public throughout the month of June, a space where it was possible to enjoy more than thirty large works with the same theme as the common thread: the passing of the years, the corrosion of metals, as well as the restoration of values to obsolete and forgotten objects.
Visiting the exhibition space was then the perfect excuse to talk with the artist and discover how much Francisco Bernal's perception of art has varied from its beginnings to date, as well as the plans that tie him to his homeland with excellent news for lovers of engraving and screen printing.
“I began my studies in Camagüey, at the Provincial School of Art, now Vicentina de la Torre, then I went through the ENA and graduated from ISA in 1985, at that time the René Portocarrero Serigraphy Workshop began in Havana and I was one of the founders, so I specialized in engraving.
“Since my student days, the phenomenon of weather and all that it entails, weather forecasts, hurricanes… in that journey I have had many series of forecasts, storms, cyclones; another of the recurring ideas in my work has to do with oxides and erosion, that is, the effect of time on certain materials”.
With artistic maturity, abstraction as a resource was taking on other nuances and mixing figuration and shadows began to be a recurring pattern for Francisco Bernal by uniting trends and techniques that position him as an excellent exponent of plastic arts not only in the Greater Antilles but in the Iberian country.
“After 1992, I went to Spain with a scholarship, a place where I finished my development and began to create engraving and serigraphy workshops, a continuation of what I was doing at that time in Havana; in Madrid I opened the art gallery "Cuba 513" where artists from the Island exhibit and to this is added a graphic collection with the name of "International Cuban Print" which already has more than 30 authors".
Regarding the recently completed exhibition "Time is gold" under the curatorship of M.Sc. Juan Carlos Mejías Ruíz, the painter and engraver in turn confessed: "these paintings are based on various series, I started with natural phenomena, but then it was deriving to the cause and the effect, at the same time I try to rescue objects with which we have lived.
“A first part of the exhibition is dedicated to my grandmother, several of the paintings have names of my family and the objects are also related, for example, the iron is linked to the trade that my grandmother performed; there is another series that is made of horseshoes, a symbolic element, which is why it is called “Luck”, a foot for the viewer to enter my world and begin to question themselves”.
Rabbit traps, cowbells and anchors are added to the great pieces recreated by Francisco Bernal, who according to Nazario Salazar in the words of the catalog is: "A stellar son (...) who returns to his homeland as a "Midas", capable of to convert, conceptually, scrap metal into gold”.
A pending account meant returning to Camagüey, so he gave himself the opportunity to return and his desires do not culminate with the exhibition, since he will open the doors of his house on Calle República 163 between Martí and General Gómez, converted into a Studio and Art Gallery.
“A link between my life in Spain and Cuba. There are many projects around and if possible it will be to create an engraving workshop, in honor of my father, who always dreamed of such a cultural center”.
Francisco Bernal's time is just beginning, the passing of the years only strengthens his desire to create and now Camagüey will be the blank canvas for his figurations and shadows.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez