Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, May 20.- The Cuban plastic artist Manuel Mendive has the concept that happiness responds to the daily routine of life, a maxim carried over to his most recent exhibition exhibited in this capital.
Mendive. Bread with guava, a happy life is the exhibition that today has a large space in the National Museum of Fine Arts where the master of performance displayed genius, creativity and ancestral religiosity to present to the public the essence of his work.
The artist, who is about to turn 80, gave an exclusive interview to Prensa Latina in which he offered a lot of value to the simplest things in life, to the most basic things.
Everything I do, I do with love. I paint, I give colors, I draw, I meditate, I think about the past and the present, Mendive reflected.
The 2001 National Fine Arts Prize winner at this point also thought about the future, about "how things are going to happen," he said.
Related to the title of his retrospective exhibition Mendive. Bread with guava, a happy life, the teacher alluded to certain values ??of people, such as humility, empathy or the meaning of sharing with others.
The most important thing is that if I have bread or a cookie and, on the other hand, so many brothers around me without anything, I chop it into small pieces and we all eat. That is happiness, it is love and it is friendship, she highlighted.
"These same feelings make me wish a long life for everyone," added the creator, who also holds the Medal of the Five Continents from UNESCO (2009), and the Knight Order of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Culture and Francophonie. of France (1994), among other distinctions.
According to another Cuban artist who won the National Fine Arts Prize, in this case 2019, Lesbia Vent Dumois, in Mendive nothing is neither free nor casual.
He always expressed that from a very young age any material served him, concluded Vent Dumois; palm trunks for sculpture, earth, glass, sand, mixed or unmixed metals for painting on board supports.
Painting on the skin of popular or contemporary dancers allows the sound to be combined with the colors of the Caribbean; His famous performances dignify the mestizo and the perfection of the human body.
Modest, with a smile always on his already aged face, something sparse and very natural, Mendive shared his vision of art with this media outlet.
The genesis of a creative search is inserted in discovering the mystery of creation from the own energy that emanates from the orishas of the Yoruba pantheon.
For the artist, wisdom linked to African roots represents accumulating ancestral knowledge.
With his sophisticated performances - discipline based on the actions of the artist or other participants, whether live, documented, spontaneous or written - the maestro displays Cubanness, sensuality and tradition of the purest sap.
When asked how much Mendive has left to do regarding his work.
Only God knows, he responded, rather I want to continue painting and loving the world, if the world does not love me it does not matter, I love myself, he concluded and thanked this medium for expressing what he feels. (PL) (Photo: Taken from the Internet)
