Frank Martínez Andújar
Publications
Frank Martínez Andújar is one of the artists who shows security in his development. During the last five years we have followed his creative career and we have always found him in the avant-garde of our art world. Interestingly, although there has been constant evolution in his artistic forms, there are enough common characteristics in his works to allow us to to identify his peculiar style: his textured backgrounds, for example, maintain their own value regardless of the forms found on the canvas or the serigraph. Andújar’s use of gigantism, although not new – think of El Greco, Picasso and Mexican art – acquires innovative characteristics.
During years of intense labor, Andújar has refined a style of his own, with a characteristic personality, rich in textures, daring in its forms, suggestive in its details. Undoubtedly, he has become a master in the texturing of the plane, in the suggestive drawing of shapes. However, he does not tie down the object; he allows for the flow of the atmosphere on the canvas, and for the configuration of figures whose contours exceed the limits which the drawing would establish. If one could speak of mythical dimensions in contemporary art, Andújar’s figures would attain the deification of the subject. Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the primeval image of Recurring Motherhood, they all converge – in his canvases and in his serigraphs – in an art form which can barely exist in the medium-sized format. It requires room, amplitude, and space. To look at an image of motherhood and find a flower vase to its right (the spectator’s left), is to look at a modern day version of Matisse’s concepts. Similarly, the musicians follow the same style: the folkloric pleneros who look like vejigantes, substitute that serious music which used to appear in his work.
For the tribute to Roland Borges Soto, Andújar chooses, among his many works, a series of canvases which constitute an intermediate stage between his serigraphs of disconnected tubular figures, and his more recent creations. We are now closer to abstraction. The shapes – and here we find consistency in Andújar – can suggest a variety of visual interpretations, closer to the iconic baggage of the spectator than to the artist’s esthetic anticipation. Sometimes, the design is symmetrical although the composition is displaced from the center by an asymmetric display of even elements. In other instances, a sculptural intention creeps unconsciously unto the canvas. Andújar’s use of color and the texture of his backgrounds are a constant, regardless of the paths followed by the figuration, configuration and disfiguration of his art. Slow and parsimonious lines, loosely drawn edges, they all converge in a hand whose steady execution is guided by a defined artistic identity.
Although no figures appear in the paintings included in Torreros, the disfigured suggestions of objects lurk therein. The line which encloses the undefined object, leaves open the interpretation. Maybe a güiro, perhaps a zemi – all connected somehow to folklore, represented by the musicians, metonymically suggested by their instruments. (The Messenger No. 2). In Angel behind the Stairwell, we find the same formula that we found in The Messenger No. 2. The angelic figure rises from a winged spot, at first green but of a different hue in every square. Finally, the figure vanishes in a phantasmagoric background. The background in Angel behind the Stairwell is richer and exchanges places with the figure. The staircase in the lower half slithers sinuously; the geometric forms, a rhombus and two red squares, only provide balance. It is the emptiness, however, which catches the eye: escape, an evasion toward a red exterior twilight, which insinuates a mystery. These works by Andújar, apparently abstractions, carry a philosophical load, theological at times, which penetrates the perception of the spectator with its cryptic message. Whether the disquietude these paintings provoke was intended by the artist, or whether it simply arises from the ancestral enigmas of human existence, we do not know. Maybe acculturation, perhaps instantaneous intuition. There is something in Andújar’s work, something inexplicable and inscrutable which leaves the observer submerged in meditation.
Frank Martínez Andújar
Por Ernesto Alvarez, PhD.
Uno de los artistas que con mayor seguridad desarrolla su arte es Frank Martínez Andújar. A lo largo de los últimos cinco años hemos seguido de cerca su creación artística y a cada paso, cada día hasta el presente, sus pasos marchan a la vanguardia en nuestro ambiente artístico. Es de sumo interés que, si bien las formas con las que crea su pintura han ido evolucionando, hay características suficientes que denotan un estilo muy suyo: la texturación de sus fondos, por ejemplo, continúan teniendo valores propios que sobreviven sin importar qué formas acojan sus lienzos o papeles serigráficos.
Si bien el gigantismo no es nuevo en la pintura - recordemos a El Greco, Picasso y la pintura mexicana, que destacaron la exageración de la figura; en Martínez Andújar adquiere características novedosas. A lo largo de años de intensa labor, Andújar ha venido depurando un arte cada vez más suyo, con una personalidad que lo identifica, rica en textura, atrevida en sus formas, sugerente en los detalles. No cabe duda de que Andújar ha alcanzado maestría en la texturación del plano, en el dibujo sugerente de formas, pero que nunca amarra el objeto y permite el flujo de la atmósfera en la amplitud del lienzo, la envolvente configuración de figuras cuyos contornos se desplazan de los límites que pondría la línea.
Si se pudiera hablar de dimensiones míticas en la pintura contemporánea, las figuras de Andújar alcanzarían la deificación del sujeto...
...Hallarse frente a una maternidad a cuya derecha - izquierda del espectador - hay un florero, es enfrentarse a los conceptos matissianos puestos al día. De igual manera los músicos que siguen el mismo estilo, ahora pleneros con aires de vejigantes, con que el artista se identifica al folklore, en sustitución de aquella música "seria" que antes aparecía en su obra....
...Es curioso que estas obras de Andújar, en apariencia abstracciones, tengan una carga de contenido filosófico, teológico en ocasiones, que penetran en la percepción de un espectador recipiente del misterioso mensaje. La inquietud que generan no podrá saberse si surge de la intencionalidad del artista o de los ancestrales misterios que dan fundamento a la vida humana. Si aculturación o intuición nacida en el instante. Lo cierto es que en la obra de Andújar hay un "algo más" inexplicable e impenetrable que dejará al que la observa meditando.
Fragmentos del ensayo de Ernesto Álvarez para la exposición "Torreos Homenaje a Borges Soto" en el Museo El Faro de los Morrillos en Arecibo en octubre de 1999.