Too bad the school year is over. For students of Plastic Arts in ESO or the Baccalaureate of Arts, it would have been a good extracurricular activity to visit the FCM. The exhibition César Manrique. The workshop of dreams, includes several aspects that budding artists should know about him: work instruments, methodology, life, work, personal vision on some issues? As a consolation, the exhibition will remain open until January 2013.
When César's agendas are observed, his firm writing reflects a determined personality, sure of himself. The numerous quotes of all kinds show an overflowing energy that was highly appreciated socially. Possibly, Manrique perfectly interpreted what his role should be in society and at the time he had to live. This clarity made his positions on the problems that were emerging on the Island forceful, volcanic, without nuances.
But I'm left, because it is necessary for the times, with one of the approaches that the Foundation has probably uncovered this time: to highlight the cult of work that exists behind César's work. In his workshop, inspiration became art, but it went hand in hand with effort, with perseverance. In the second of the round tables on César's life, Luis Morales related the enormous technical challenge involved in the creation of the Jameos del Agua. Therefore, it would not be a bad idea that, in addition to aesthetics, in the CACT of the Cabildo, a permanent space should be left showing how, in those precarious times, they were built.
The same could be done in Inalsa, in the Los Valles Wind Farm, in some of the few salt flats on the Island that remain? In this way, apart from an invaluable educational resource for our schoolchildren, these permanent exhibitions would make us value the sacrifice and tenacity that those who preceded us have put on the table (of which, the most scoundrel politicians we have suffered have taken miserable advantage).
More than the Lanzarote farmer himself, perhaps what caught Manrique's attention was his enormous industriousness. The Foundation has been right again, once again in the figure of César may be the key to what is needed now: to work hard.
