IN SEARCH OF THE ENDURING OURENSE            

Prologue: Ramón Otero Pedrayo

THE CLASSICAL AND ESTABLISHED EXPRESSION contains a deep and constant truth under the outer gentle irony… In a few years, our city even changed the color, the ligth and, it is not necessary to mention how the thin and daily weave of rumors was transformed…Therefore, the venture of Conde Corbal achieves a higher and even more thrilling level. The writer and the artist meet and complete each other. Risco from the heart of the city, Conde Corbal, from Ourense, but from Miño Arrabaldés which has solemn and slow meanders; although each of them started their way at a different psychological time, they met very soon. Because the truth in its highest degree of transcendence inspires both pen and pencil.

The happy agreements, often unconscious, between men and things, never die. The myrtles of the garden may be outshone by the arrogance of acacia trees. Just the reflected light of the sun or the beating of rain on the stones is necessary to make us forget the sadness of gray cement. In order to make “Ourense perdurable” the most beautiful and excellent city, they needed the second term of the comparison. Now  the violin sounds even better in the enlarged room, and the tired moon of the modern streets looks for rest, fantasy, the silence of the old streets and of the roofs turned by the unexpected winter into green and unexpected islets. The artist does not go out every day to hunt old ages. He does not make an inventoy of the estate of a beatiful deceased woman… He discovers the admirable agreements and concordances of people and houses, hours and seasons, and the landscape of an alley, or a square. For the first time, the architectural and decorative sides of our city do not appear as illustrations of the old times, exluded from the whole. They are linked to the city and its daily tasks through the subtlest threads of sympathy…And Conde Corbal not only makes this wonderful benefit, but he educates our sense of depth, of what is throbbing despite the appearance, of the charming reverse of the present. He leads to a projection in its true significance. As ligth, the trend towards form and harmony can not be dark but for looks and judgemnts too attentive to the foreground. Conde Corbal, as well as Vicente Risco, purifies what we feel about Ourense [ourensanismo]. This spiritual quality is impossible to be defined in an environment like ours, that mistrusts definitions. Therfore, the volume with wrong words, grateful and passionate, that I am introducing may be the best equivalent to the ideal art of ourensanismo, which is unlikely to ever be writen.

RAMÓN OTERO PEDRAYO