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MONG the
confusion of initiatives, which however is not a world of disillusion, offered
every day by Madrid galleries, Carrillo's exhibition has remained deeply
engraved in my memory. I visited it, I came again and I said farewell the day
before the closure. I can see it again through two different approaches, which
finally meet: purity and communication. Purity sometimes appears as a symbol
of distance, of ivory tower without message, and on the
contrary, communication sometimes also serves the interests ofthe
commonplace. When these two approaches join together, peace is the outcome.
Let's go deeper into this background of peace. In the
panorama of present painting, we can notice a dangerous
predominance of “the spot” which in many cases, results from
not taking drawing as the basis of one's art. Carrillo sticks faithfully to a
tradition which never fails to start from a vision and the use of drawing as a
direct expression of the artist with the following two worlds: a world where
eyes steal images and a world where the soul becomes the painter's hand.
The passage from drawing to
colour gradually leads us to apply the qualitative adjective “musical” to this
painting, something similar to what happens with melody and harmony. I would
say that CARRILLO's chromatist is designed like half tones where expectations,
absences, desolation - should they provoke a shout or an anguished clamour -
are limited so as not to outrage people in a way that enables the sadness of a
biography full of tragedy to become melancholy or the colours of melancholy.
His whole work conveys
enchantment, and not in the superficial sense of the word. This is an
enchantment with a background. For instance: the morose song of the green oak,
a tree of the “great and sad” Spain sung by Fray Luis, Machado and more
recently by Manuel Azaña. The last mentioned evoked a Castillan village named
“the lonely oak of commandresses”. Like in music, when the meeting is
important, the background is called silence. As stated in his poster for Paris,
“only silence is valuable”. This poster must be the main symbol of genuine
ecology.
Carrillo will have to come
back. His canvasses will be once again as great a success as his last
exhibition. Once again, he will teach us faithfulness, but how many times was
it sacrificed ? A vocation which is a gift of the high confession, but also a
personal fact that I would like to be transmissible. Painters like CARRILLO are
already masters and let's hope that the former Fine Arts student will come back
there to teach his art to students.
FEDERICO SOPEÑA IBAÑEZ,
Director of the Prado Museum, Madrid .
Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid.
Founder member of the European Academy.
Director of the Academy of Spain in Rome.
