Cosme’s Visions
especiales
In the fashion of Renaissance or Baroque painters, or in a convergence of pictorial references, Cosme Proenza Lit up a magical, wonderful world, populated by beautiful creatures, dreamlike environments, undulations and iridescence: a country glimpsed, earth recreated with spirit of demiurge.
Cosme Proenza was a teacher.
He once said that he considered himself a painter without definitive style marks, because what interested him was to recreate the history of art with his work. That's what Cosme said, but, undoubtedly, his mark was unmistakable. Cosme's way, so imitated, so admired, so studied...
The thematic universe was huge: the conceptual implications, the historical references, the powerful metaphor... Time and time again he fascinated with his figurations, in which one could admire what he called "the craft", that is, the painter's work.
To those who called him a beautician, an old fashioned painter, Cosme always responded, with a large dose of irony: "To much honor." He honored beauty, which he understood as a celebration of harmony.
"Us painters were given a gift, I'm not going to waste it making elementary paintings, of dubious intellectual depth," he commented one day. And he would say, amused: «When they suddenly tell me conceptual art, I am horrified. I'd rather spend an hour drawing the wing of a butterfly than say that a common hinge is the butterfly.
Cosme Proenza has passed away, in his thriving creative fullness. Holguín loses one of its greatest cultural drives. The visual arts lose one of the most lavish and inspired creators it had. The landscapes and creatures of Cosme Proenza Almaguer will always inhabit a place of privilege, between memory and invention. Promised land of art.
Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff
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