Hugo Figueroa

In a City craving for art, the visit of Nabil Kanso fully justifies an expression of gratitude.

One is grateful for the pause in a landscape where nothing seems to supply the happiness brought by the visit of one with the build of a creator. This painter is a generator of aesthetic possibilities within the precepts of the foremost forms of painting.

We have been exposed to numerous exhibitions, including the last Biennal in these very same rooms, where we saw the latent possibilities of those who have within themselves the power to create, but who are numb by the fable of imitation, by the prudery of thinking that a painting is rather talked about than painted., and by the illusion of becoming acknowledged painters before consummate study and work. I am enthusiastic about this exhibition, particularly for the sake of the young artists.

Twenty-seven works by this renowned artist are being attached to the walls of the Julio Arraga Art Gallery, where the magnitude of the paintings places you in the midst of a beautiful and a violent cage.

The 27 large pieces encompass a period from 1976 to 1974, and yet they look as if they had been done in a single session. The homogeneity of the execution creates a feeling of confidence substantiated by the personality and decisiveness of the artist. It speaks of solidity in terms of what the artist is doing, though one would not want to venture guessing where he is heading. A relatively extended period, for a real artist, is quite a working space.

The synchrony and diachrony of the work cross a still point in which the show is no longer a total of 27 paintings, but one only. Perseverant and variable, obsessive and elastic, Kanso’s work endures the most deplorable and prime analyses.

Because it is such a spontaneous style of painting, and so rarely attempted by other painters, it deserves serious attention from art critics and artists. For it is more than painting, it is a favorable dissertation, beneficial and significant.

His strong colors and powerful brushstrokes blend with the subject matter: World Chaos. Kanso applies a brutal brushstroke, rough and steady. Upon deep analysis, we find that his brush is invariable; there are no spaces that denote any clumsy manner, weariness or other ways that disguise deficiency in technique. This mastery in Kanso is admirable, since the scale of his canvases is more than big, it is heroic.

The battle against large formats cannot be won but with a strong determination and an absolute mastery of technique. These are inseparable and preconceived. The dynamic handling of the layout has a total identification with Kanso’s topical matter. His powerful themes could in no way be handled with softer and milder style designed to make them palatable. By way of parallelism, Kanso’s work is a harmony of style and subject matter.

The cage becomes a huge purgatory which is reduced to the pupil of the eye. The vast spaces covered with paint look like murals that shrink and contradict the first impression. Muralism tends towards fetish, towards cliché, towards the rigidity of an idea ruled by the perfect tension between what it says and what it wants to say, between what touches the pupil of the eye and between what one feels in constant life. It is here that you find the hand of the real artist beside the painter: a man with a faculty, a meaning, a longing and a point.

While it is true that his paintings speak terror and horror, the aesthetic conformation of the mask secures what is fatal as a text or pretext, a latent denunciation within a framework so coherent that Kanso’s work, far from being a wail of tragedy, are songs of hope (esperanza).

The devotion of a man and his art surpass with their magnificent beauty the drama represented.