The waves of A Lanzada

Latex with acrylic on acetate,60x40

Series: Galician ethnography, (Valle-Inclán's work)

Flower of Holiness, V, 4. The waves of A Lanzada, for the evil eye. A local resident.

...there is a documentary side of the engravings that shows the contemporary relevance, although buried underground, of Galician culture, especially in the earlyh 1970’s. His concern while painting the survival of this culture is to make it known. Valle’s work is a starting point: at the same time, Conde highlights the Galician background of the “Castilianized” writer and starts his own graphic exploration of the world left in Galicia after about four centuries of silence...In the engraving corresponding to the nine waves swim, women go for a swim, impressed with the rite of beling naking and plunging into the waves, while a crippled man leans his body on a crutch while looking sideways. His mischievous glance devalues the holy aspet of the rite...Whith these considerations, we are again at the nexus of the link between Conde Corbal and Valle-Inclán, because it is exactly this aesthetic of perplexity, of circuses that open to suggest other works and other considerations, which is offered to us by the aesthetic “quietism” of Don Ramón, the precarious balance between intellect and feeling, identification and alienation, distance and approach. Never mind that the two artists have different purposses when working with the Galician reality, the lesson learned by Conde Corbal from Valle is that arts, even the art or teaching [that means, in order to be authentically art of teaching] must be impact and at the same time it must evoke reflection.

Carol Maier

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