Morelia, Mexico - In the hotel dining room I downed fresh fruit and yogurt and warm milk considered cold here. Now, where was the check? I didn't want to wait. It was my first full day in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan about two hundred miles west of Mexico City. I'd done some homework and wanted to get out and see this lovely colonial city's cathedrals and art and the oldest university in all the Americas and the homes and workplaces of revolutionaries and the giant market under an endless tent and narrow stone streets and the aqueduct and much more. Unable to wait I got up and stepped empty-handed to the cashier at the bar whereupon rested a copy of Provincia, the largest daily newspaper in the state. "Can I take a look?" "You can have it," she said. My eyes were pulled to the Style section - Estilo - and photographs of huge paintings on exhibit opening night at a local gallery, Espacio Arte Contemporaneo. The paintings were stunning in black and white, and in front of them, colorfully dressed and coiffed and made-up, stood groups of notably engaged people. Clearly, this show was generating heat. And I resolved to see it. Passing through bright green trees in the park across from the hotel, I entered the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, showed the article to three employees and asked for directions, checked out their exhibit of original paintings from twentieth century Mexican calendars, and soon received a hand-drawn map to a place only several blocks away. In an affluent neighborhood in front of a modern one-story house converted into a gallery, I exited the taxi and glanced at a large empty birdcage, and moving toward the building saw some enormous exotic birds in cages, and walked inside to be riveted by the face - more than six feet high and almost five across - of a mustachioed old man wearing a white hat. "That's really good," I said to the middle-aged man who greeted me. "Gracias." "What's the artist's name?" "Fernando Motilla Zarur." "I saw his picture in the paper. How old is he?" "Eighteen." My mouth popped open. "Eighteen?" That's like someone his age pitching in the Major Leagues. "He's my son." At that point, having heard praise in imperfect Spanish, the young and slender Fernando Motilla modestly entered the room and shook my hand. "Can I ask you a few questions?" "Sure," he said. * * * Fernando Motilla had always been an indifferent and thoroughly average student until he entered junior high school. Then he became a poor student. History induced yawns. Math irritated him. Science was excruciating. Only his drawing class stimulated him, but it met once a week for an hour, and Motilla never considered restraining himself until the next official artistic opportunity. He sketched fellow students in his history classes, and drew still lifes while teachers droned about equations, and with quick strokes crafted landscapes to overwhelm grim recitations of the internal organs of frogs. His teachers, often having assumed the lad was a diligent even frenetic note-taker, were unimpressed upon discovering the nature of his output. "You're not studying," some declared, hovering over his desk to grab his work and wad it into balls hurled into wastebaskets. "Don't draw in class," others admonished before snatching his efforts and tearing them up. A few teachers were less theatrical and spoke only in writing at report-card time, handing Motilla his usual six out of ten, equivalent to a D. Regardless of professorial response, Motilla remained unflustered. He knew he would soon make more drawings. Their creation was a natural urge, an expression of passion that nothing else evoked. His parents understood. They'd received his artwork as gifts since he was five and always urged him to develop his talent. Now it was the year two thousand, Fernando had just turned fourteen, and the family made an ambitious decision: he would quit school, take art classes, and paint full-time. Painters often make their earliest efforts in landscapes, which are useful in developing technique but not creatively demanding - Motilla thus began studying with August�n Torres, and painted mountains and lakes and oceans, and soon made his first sale, for two thousand pesos, about two hundred dollars. When Motilla was fifteen, Torres publicly declared he was the first student who'd ever surpassed him. The teacher also expressed his sentiments in writing: "You're beginning your artistic life. Enjoy it because everyone isn't an artist. Consider yourself privileged." Fernando Motilla understood the opportunity and embraced studies in surrealism with Rafael Flores. Classes were held downtown in La Casa de Cultura, a huge stone colonial fusion of church and fort. Inside these impressive walls Motilla and the other students painted the human form, generally that of a naked young woman - for centuries the most exalted subject of artists, Jesus Christ not withstanding. The young painter was growing. He discovered Dali and Magritte, champions of surrealism from Spain and Belgium. "You probably also love Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo," I said of Mexico's greatest and most glamorous painters, respectively. "Not really. I don't like their themes, but I like their color, composition, and technique. I'd seen their work everyday since childhood, so I suppose they began to bore me." No one is aware of every influence, and in this case Motilla does not realize what he learned from the exotic, often ill, frequently intoxicated but always intriguing Frida Kahlo who with paint powerfully depicted her physical and psychic pain: some of the most compelling images are of her fractured spine and pelvis. One of Motilla's first two sales of surrealism was "Life and Death" which perches a skull atop a body that is normal except for an exposed spine and pelvis. Frida would've liked it; Diego probably would've bought it. "You should ask a thousand dollars for those paintings," Rafael Flores told Motilla. "That's way too much." "No, it's very low." The teacher was correct. Both paintings sold for a grand. The astute collector was Michoacan's Secretary of Government. He also offered the precocious fifteen-year old a chance to go to Italy for intensive study. Motilla elected to stay with his family and, under Miguel Rinc�n, study a variety of abstract techniques. He used sand, pigment, and encaustic materials, and began painting much larger works. Though the soft-spoken Motilla is by all appearances quite different than the depressed, alcoholic, and ultimately suicidal Jackson Pollack, king of the drip painters, he feels an artistic kinship. "Dali started surrealism, and Pollack, by flinging paint onto canvases, invented painting in action. After brushing on an acrylic foundation, sometimes with representational elements, I'd put my fingers into paint then let it drop onto the canvas. I learned a lot about the atmosphere of color and texture. But after less than ten paintings I thought that's enough of the abstract. It's possible I'll return to it someday." At age sixteen, Motilla arrived at another crossroads: he quit taking regular art classes, wanting to eliminate the influence of his teachers. They'd taught him a lot but by working alone sensed he'd grow more artistically; his intuition proved accurate, and he's already had three solo exhibitions and earned critical praise, substantial publicity, and a growing group of public and private collectors who now pay three thousand dollars for the paintings in the current show - "Retratos Pluriemociales" (Portraits of Different States of Mind). "Let me show you," said Motilla, leading a tour into each of the gallery's several rooms with tile floors. "I've tried to capture their moods at the moments I took their pictures." We examined "hyper-realistic" portraits of numerous happy or introspective people - young adult female friends, children of associates, a former teacher, his grandmother, his mother, and sister. An open-mouthed Austrian woman is so animated she seems ready to gnaw her way out of the canvas. As we entered the hall, the atmosphere changed: an intense man glares at everyone through a large left eye and an alarming, half-closed right eye. "There's a guy that's tough to deal with," I said. "That's my dad." "Oh - of course. Now I see. I like the technique here, more emotional, not photorealistic. And the heavy application of paint is effective." "That's impasto. I used the same technique with my grandfather." "I notice some of the pictures are very clear and some are foggy or a little out of focus." "Right. We call these works unfocused. I sketch the portrait beforehand - as with all the others - but with these I use a compressor to spray the paint on a little at a time. The process is aer�grafo." "How long does it take to do these?" "All of them take about two weeks." "I see there's another guy not too happy. That's you. Are you angry?" "More not satisfied. I was painting my emotions." Father Juan Motilla had joined the conversation several times and now did so again. He'd owned a construction company and other businesses in San Luis Potosi, in central Mexico, before bringing the family further south to Morelia several years ago. "Now I just sell birds and paintings," he said. "You're obviously very supportive of Fernando's career." "Absolutely. Fernando and I know he can't rest because in order to climb the mountain, you can't limit yourself. If he rests, he'll regress." "I agree. Let's see some new work." Father and son led me back to Fernando's office. That's where we entered another world, as one does with fine music and movies. We entered the surreal world of "Mujer Golfista" - Lady Golfer. A sleek lady in a chic dress reveals her bare back to you. She holds the driver straight up as she peers into a beckoning yet forbidding all white eternity. The golf ball is teed high and ready to drive. You can hit it if you want. Mujer Golfista never will. She'll forever be the pensive and motionless star in a significant work by young Fernando Motilla. Click here to see "Mujer Golfista" George Thomas Clark is the author of two books, Hitler Here, a biographical novel, and Outliving Flynn, a short story collection. This year Hitler Here will be published in English in India by Vasan Publications, and Mlada Fronta of the Czech Republic also recently purchased the book. Clark's website is https://www.GeorgeThomasClark.com/ |
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