The President of the Cabildo of Lanzarote inaugurated this Monday the exhibition Against Oblivion, a project of La Casa Amarilla, which includes the drawings and graphic work of the last 50 years of the painter and illustrator Santiago Alemán Valls.
Oswaldo Betancort congratulated the curators of the exhibition, Rubén Acosta Morales and Mario Ferrer Peñate, and the entire team of La Casa Amarilla, managed by the Data Center, "for promoting projects that recover our cultural and patrimonial identity", and thanked "the generosity of Santiago Alemán for sharing with the society of Lanzarote his love and defense of our own".
In that sense, Oswaldo Betancort, accompanied by the new councilor of the Data Center, Ascensión Toledo, valued the role of Santiago Alemán in the history of heritage, culture, art or social activism of Lanzarote through his works and his work as a teacher, transmitting to different generations his passion for this field. He also invited citizens to enjoy this free exhibition in a unique location such as La Casa Amarilla, which has numerous works that take a tour of various works by the painter.
While one of the curators, Mario Ferrer, highlighted "the very high technical perception of Santiago Alemán in his eagerness to rescue the heroes of Lanzarote (the peasants) using drawing as therapy", the author himself expressed in his speech that "it does not enter his head to release my tools, which are my weapons", to continue developing his artistic work, and apologized "for the background of misfortune" with which he reflects reality, "however unpleasant it may be".
Among the contributions of Santiago Alemán are artistic participations in the heritage, "under an exquisite technique and a documentary eagerness"; literature, participating in a multitude of publications; social denunciation, with drawings dedicated to the harshness of migrations, the loss of rural and marine ways of life or the forced solitude of old age, among other topics, or teaching, with a trajectory of almost 40 years in different art schools of the Canary Islands as a professor in the specialty of drawing and color.
The exhibition, which includes illustrations in multiple formats and techniques unified under a unitary spirit of vindication and denunciation, can be visited until September 30 at La Casa Amarilla on León y Castillo street in Arrecife.