With the generic title of “The power of light”, he Main Comic Strip Theater hosts an anthology exhibition of the painter Juan Cantabrana (1941). The exhibition will remain until November 17. With almost a hundred works that occupy the two floors, it is the largest that this Cordovan artist has produced in his hometown. It includes representations of biblical scenes, even nudes, landscapes, portraits or interior figures.
“The selection criteria were romantic, intuitively we made a diverse collection from different years and erasand without taking anything else into account,” he said yesterday at the inauguration, accompanied at the inauguration by the territorial delegate of Culture and Sports, Eduardo Lucena, and the municipal delegate of Culture, Isabel Albás.
In the works we can see the evolution of the author over the years, which he himself describes as a starting point from classicism to move on to impressionism and later to post-impressionism, with a great influence of the Fauvist painterswhich is seen in his use of colours: “fortunately, the public says that my style is recognisable and that, after so many years, it satisfies me”.
The exhibition features the teacher Miguel Clementson as a curator. In his presentation text, Clementson reveals some of the painter’s secrets: “He likes to undertake the application of color directly without prior drawing, so that through the appropriate arrangement of the chromatic plates, the formal construction of the motif will emerge.” For the curator, Cantabrana is able to create a microcosm with what he calls “chromatic melody”.
On the upper floor of the Main Comic Strip Theater, eight works dedicated to biblical themes are exhibited, accompanied by a curiosity. The painting entitled “Jesus before the people” is exhibited together for the first time in forty years. And we say together because they are two rectangular parts of enormous dimensions that have only been brought together once and for a very short time: “it was exhibited only when I finished the painting on the altar of the church. Chapel of the La Colorá estateIn Montoro“.
Jesus in the house of Saint Thomas
This place belonged to a friend and collector of the painter himself, Carlos Vegara. When he left the estate, “the painting remained in his collection but… divided,” Cantabrana said. Now it can be seen again with the rest of the biblical stories.
Precisely, the Cordovan painter, still very active, continues to create biblical scenes and one of them, on which he is currently working, will be the one that will close the series. It is a triptych of two meters high by 6.40 meters long. They represent the parable that tells Jesus in the house of Saint Thomas. “I am a Christian and I am interested in reading the New Testament, which I was captivated by its simple but very real descriptions.” From there, Cantabrana saw the scenes he had read in his mind, until he decided to capture them. “The first painting was ‘The Resurrection of Lazarus’, which unfortunately is not included in this exhibition.”
Cantabrana can’t decide which one to choose thematic line preferential or a painting, or several, that can be classified as favorites among those in this anthology, because “I am interested in each of them at its moment, because each moment of a painting is special.” Many of these moments will be detailed by the artist himself in front of his audience, as guided tours are planned, the dates of which will be announced shortly on the social networks of the Teatro Cómico Principal.
Cantabrana trained as a painter in Madrid and was part of the New Figuration group, which focused on urban landscapes. He returned to Córdoba in 1979, where he developed his theory of irises, based on the use of color as iridescence, which gives his work a clearly personal, perfectly recognizable stamp.
