CAMAGÜEY.-The gravity of the Cuban painter and pedagogue Lorenzo Linares Duque kept colleagues, disciples and admirers of his work in suspense, who on Tuesday 31st mourn his death in this city, at the age of 71.

Linares was born on August 13th, 1952 in the city of Camagüey, but his childhood was spent in rural areas, on a farm in the town of La Vallita, located in the municipality of Florida.

In several interviews he said that his first approach to something artistic was through a workshop by Nazario Salazar, when he was studying at Esteban Borrero junior high school.

Linares graduated from the Provincial School of Arts of Camagüey as an instructor in the specialty of drawing and painting, in 1973; and four years later, from the Cubanacán National School of Art in Havana.

He is from the generation of Cubans trained in the former Soviet Union, specifically at the State Institute of Art in Kyiv, Ukraine. There he began his rodeo series. He returned in 1984 with the degree of Master of Fine Arts.

Those sketches of horses and other animals later led to the famous cockfights. Exciting themes for him were also the landscape and the human figure.

The Provincial Council of the Plastic Arts of Camagüey confirmed the sad news on his institutional profile on social networks, from where he kept up to date with the deterioration due to septic shock.

He accompanies this pain at the loss of a master of greatness and humility. He exhibited in the newspaper's gallery space. We remember his personal exhibition Towards the Limit, at the beginning of 2008. We return to that interview as gratitude and tribute to his memory.

A GUAJIRO WITH A VIRTUOUS HAND

A champion of our Nature, a Cuban as beautiful as the landscapes he loves and paints, wants to take us to the limit. When La Vallita, where he lived, looks through the paintings, he does not ignore it, simply because Lorenzo Linares is still a guajiro (a countryside man) with a virtuous hand.

He shakes us with the vertigo of his famous cockfights, such as the cinematographic triptych Life and Death; but also from the views of the fields he invites us to meditate on human conflicts. The native, the typical, in short, the Cuban defended at all costs in seven large-format works, prestige the Nicolás Guillén gallery of the weekly Adelante until the end of the month, with exquisite and unrepeatable scenes that compete with the hustle and bustle of the city.

“I thought about studying a technical career closely linked to painting, what we know today as civil engineering, and over time I realized that my great vocation was painting. First I won a direct scholarship in Cubanacán, but I was not that mature and perhaps due to some prejudices I decided on construction school. When I showed up again, they had enabled the provincial art schools and in 1970 I started at the one in Camagüey. I have fond memories of those three years.

“Then I took the entrance tests for the National School of Art (ENA) where the impression was very great. I had that contact with my colleagues who today are national painters like Nelson Domínguez, Chocolate, Cosme Proenza. Here we did not have that level of information, search, study, nor better work with models.”

 — Tell me about the experience in Ukraine.

—We had done the tests with the Soviets who worked in Cuba and we entered the ISA. A proposal was made to replace those foreign technicians and they chose a group. We went to different places, for example, Montoto studied in Moscow, I in Kyiv, Aisar and Lescay in the old Leningrad, today Saint Petersburg. It was a wonderful experience".

—According to Montoto, the ENA greatly promoted imagination and neglected technique. There it was quite the opposite. Did Soviet realism shock you?

—It wasn't a surprise because I always aspired to a technique. I had read some things and had seen the greats like Picasso who were great technicians. I thought that technique gave tools to be able to carry out the imaginative. The six years flew by due to so much overload and exercise, although all the exercises were scientific in those institutions with centuries-old experience. The dosage of the programs was perfect for learning.

”I remember an anecdote. Sometimes when I was at the hostel, during the break when a friend arrived, I felt the need for them to sit and pose. I painted up to two or three portraits a day. And I came to Cuba with that need that school gave me. “All improvisation and free creative work, if they have a good foundation, can be interesting and impressive.”

—Do you have any history of painters in your family?

—To paint, not strictly speaking, but my mother had a great vocation and you can see it in the embroidery and drawings she made. Another older sister of mine came to make very interesting images. Life privileged me and I was able to develop.

—What are the fondest memories you have of La Vallita?

-All. I really love the house where I live now but I aspire to see greenery in the patio when I wake up and that comes from there. Also endearing was the life that my father led with the horses as a hunter in the transport of livestock and when the laborers met with the blacksmiths they brought from Camagüey for a weekend. That moved me to do my graduate thesis in the Soviet Union on the Cuban rodeo. A teacher helped me who told me: one of the things you should think about is what your past was like. And it was all that country life, that outdoor vegetation. Horses are a pending issue.

—Is that where the issue of roosters comes from?

-Also. I remember visiting my uncle Dimas Linares, now deceased. He had farms with the State and with all the techniques. Those roosters grew up very pretty, special. In the first ones, the color caught my attention and from there I found characteristics such as not letting the whole family get caught in the patio; the bravery and also the double meaning of the man who trains them to kill them and enrich themselves. Many people ask me if I'm a gallero or if I like it. I try to give that background to the beauty of those animals and their fidelity to their land, to their space by being able to fight until the end, until they kill the other.

—Why is Linares so realistic?

—I'm doing some studies so that reality is a little less obvious and more subjective. But I started like this to respect all of the above, the Cuban and Ukrainian schools and it has gone well for me because I have been able to express myself and it has had an impact. I'm looking for variants but they won't be abrupt changes; let no one fear because behind a new figuration there is still the hand of before.

—A few years ago landscapers were frowned upon in the face of the experimental fashion.

—Without fear of being wrong, those were my best times and the ones when I slept the best. I always saw this attack by detractors against realist art as very false. I think that it is not about waging war on a millennia-old system of ideas that has said so much. It is not so easy to delete it.

—Do you propose a photographic vision?

—Within our training we had to go to the landscape to work on it directly, which is how things are best grasped and where you have to quicken your hand. Today is not the same. When I want to work on something I go and get information that in fact is not light because you have to look for the composition, do a very in-depth study of that content, but I make my variations.

—Do you prefer to work with oil on canvas?

-Yeah. I wanted to stay with oil because it is a technique that I master and know. I started working on some things with acrylic and although I didn't delve into it, I left it aside, but I respect it. I plan to start with other supports such as cardboard, and more feasible materials such as charcoal for the drawing technique. They are the things that come immediately.

—Do you recognize the influence of other painters?

—I have a lot of the classics. In fact, for my rodeo thesis I did a study of Goya's work on bullfighting. Also, much veneration and admiration for Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Rubens, and the Russians of chiki landscaping: Serof and Mirlof, practically unknown here. I have drunk from many sources.

—Do you have a preference for other arts?

—I am very interested in cinema, theater, literature. When I have the chance I carry a book with me. Now that wars are breaking out where men are killed as if they were ants, it is time to take a look at the good scriptures.

—Do you paint every day?

—When I can I paint every day. If they are hectic I take a break to regain strength and be ready again.

—What do you think about when you are creating?

—In what I'm doing. I play instrumental music, generally classical, to create an environment for the ideas that come out. Painting takes a lot of work, dedication, and concentration.

—Which work satisfies you the most?

—All of them, from the first ones in which I took my steps, which took me some time to complete and with them I learned. Do not forget.

—Do you think of your work as a testimony of this time?

—Yes, but not as a photographic view but as a criticism that reflects the good that man does for humanity and nature, in the face of his aggressions. I must work hard and squeeze my hand hard to do what I want.

Many young people are inspired by this painter of marked craft, who so closely recalls with his brush the pictorial realism that emerged in France in the mid-19th century, which only validated the beauty provided by reality and the artist had to discover it.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez