The city of Arrecife has premiered this Thursday a new sculptural group, "Fisherman with marlin", by the Lanzarote artist Jorge Isaac Medina. The mayor, Ástrid Pérez, presided over the inauguration ceremony, with the unveiling of the plaque that gives the work its name.
The event was also attended by a large representation of the civil and military society of the island, as well as members of the municipal corporation and other local administrations, who gathered at the place where the sculpture is installed, in the roundabout between the Charco de San Ginés and the entrance to the Marina de Arrecife marina.
Astrid Pérez thanked all the guests for their presence and highlighted "the genius of the artist Jorge Isaac Medina and the beauty of the sculpture." "The city of Arrecife, its residents and visitors, can enjoy the pleasure of contemplating what could well be a frozen moment of our seafaring past, of that old and endearing relationship with the sea and the sea," she said.
This large-format sculptural group reaches 7 meters in height, is made of iron and steel on a concrete base, and is made up of the fisherman, in his boat, face to face with the marlin and among the waves, "which gives the whole work a great plastic beauty", they emphasize from the Consistory.
"It is, through a character from our common history, whose life was so similar to that of so many men from the Canary Islands, accustomed to not turning their backs on the sea, how Gregorio Fuentes Betancort sneaks into the novel 'The Old Man and the Sea'. Born in Arrecife and an emigrant in Cuba, with an adventurous heart, he manages to ascend to the Olympus of universal literature characters thanks to the pen of the American writer and Nobel Prize winner, Ernest Hemingway," the mayor said in her speech.
The author of the work, Jorge Isaac Medina, had words of thanks for the Arrecife City Council and its mayor for their confidence in the project and the facilities to carry out the work, and also for his wife and his team, and stressed that "Fisherman with marlin" is the recreation of an authentic duel of titans", where "the viewer is immersed in the scene and can enjoy the work from different points of view and feel in the middle of the ocean."
The model of what was going to be this sculptural group was presented in July of last year, from there the artist has been shaping the work in his workshop, and last January the installation began in its current location and some of the pieces of the artistic ensemble were made in situ, such as the waves and the base of the sculpture.
