Text included in the book “El hacedor de sueños”, published on the occasion of the exhibitions in homage to Enrique Gran.

Caja Cantabria Cultural Centre, Santander, 2005.

Caja Cantabria Palace, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, 2005.

Lebaniego Study Centre (Church of San Vicente), Potes, Cantabria, 2005.

Published in the newspaper LA RAZÓN, Sunday 12 December 2004.

THE LEGEND OF ENRIQUE GRAN

Francisco Nieva. Member of the Royal Academy of Language. Text extracted from the book “El hacedor de sueños”, published on the occasion of the exhibitions in homage to Enrique Gran. Caja Cantabria Cultural Centre, Santander. 2005 Palacio de Caja Cantabria, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, 2005 Centro de Estudios Lebaniegos (Church of San Vicente), Potes, Cantabria, 2005 Has Enrique Gran been the most enigmatic and romantic figure in his group and even in his time? It is certain that he was. Before that, I knew his paintings, which made a serious impression on me, and in what sense could they be described as abstract or illusionist, materialist or visionary? You could see reliefs and shadows of photographic veracity.

One could say that of a visionary photography. They suggested as enormous cosmic collapses, amidst avalanches of light; aerial visions, plummeting, as if they were being watched from above by a divine “creator” without restraint and without pity, who was pleased to produce a whole succession of dazzling cataclysms, each with a different meaning, atmosphere and colour. We see matter flying, we see whirlwinds of all kinds curling and spreading dawn and dusk, fog and storms, with an inexplicable and magical realism, as if we saw them “in truth”. This “resemblance to…” made him suspicious of the critique of radical informalism and the programmed rupture, which only aspired to have Tàpies mark him with a chirlo, well slashed, in his mortar sensibility. On the contrary, this would have enthused Víctor Hugo, would have enthused Baudelaire… And that is why, for lack of culture and real sensitivity, the Spanish critics of the time did not fully recognise his great role, that of a 20th century romantic, a special case, the portraitist or metaphysical landscape painter of a contemplative and painless apocalypse.

These paintings are presented as snapshots of the maximum telluric revolution, before man appeared or after he disappeared. In solitude and in an always shocking silence. It was also the case that this curious visionary of our time was a most handsome and attractive boy – the hero painter with a virile naivety and an acute psychism. An almost fictional character, an affable and thoughtful Don Juan, full of a great and complex inner life. It was highly gratifying to live and talk with him. Nothing proves this better than the sequence of a film, already historical, which immortalised him at his best in terms of melancholy and affability. What a presence he had, what an assurance of being a real “divo” in front of the camera! This film is El sol del membrillo, in which he intervened as an interlocutor for Antonio López.

It was as if the director, Víctor Erice, had bet on the best actor in Hollywood for that role – absolutely moving and expressive – and for one of the best scenes in this film, so full of discoveries and deaf and sharp emotions. There we have Enrique Gran, there we have him forever fixed, always present and alive in him. This is how I would like to meet him again. He led a life as a tireless painter and hallucinated by his own will of hallucination. He had no practical sense at all. His magnificent paintings could have been priced very high, if he had promoted himself better, and they still may be in time, when their value and significance are duly highlighted, those paintings will not be lost; but he seemed to live in another world, as if locked in a great beacon, in which a dazzling chaos was always taking place. And he smiled, he always smiled… But as in a romantic tale – a tale by Balzac – the coin had a reverse side.

The day I visited him in his studio, I was alarmed. I couldn’t explain it to myself, it had no equal to anything, what I saw was insane. I told Antonio López. – “What about Enrique Gran? Something is happening to him, we don’t know what it is. It seems that he has no brakes, he does not stop painting, he paints constantly and without rest, he is tying himself up; the studio is full of paintings, full to overflowing; they are cornering him materially, they are going to drown him, they are choking him and it seems impossible to live there. What can be done, what can we do?” And that was indeed the case. Delirious and silent, like his painting. His immense conceptual load, of sea and mountain slides, pressed him more and more, like a projectile about to explode.

The outcome was predictable. But how to stop it? By putting it into the hands of the administration as quickly as possible? How long does it take to report all this to an administration, which asks for so many justifications to proceed? Nothing could be done. The novel and enigmatic painter died tragically, as if all the cosmic discharges invoked by him were burning him with their light of creation and destruction. This is the whole legend of Enrique Gran. Now, that intense inner life is a mystery. We do not know well who Enrique Gran is, who he was, why he came to paint like that, what was the mystery that made him live and die.

We only know about the creative force that animates his most dazzling and disturbing paintings, those of a contemplative Apocalypse without pain. Who is witnessing it? The last secret of the romantic Gran, may be this: art is suggestion, and Gran suggests us to look at his landscapes from a very original point of view: the one that God himself could have, very quietly installed in a bunker of self-protection against himself. This game, which is risky and romantic, is not lacking in strength. And a source of hallucination, both for the collector of good paintings and for the most uninformed viewer.

Francisco Nieva. Member of the Royal Academy of Language

Madrid, 6 December 2004