Cándido Fernández Mazas situating, illustrator and humorist
If the work of Cándido Fernández Mazas has not received the attention and respect it deserves, let alone seems to have been the one that has been dedicated to his work, which could be described as excellent as a cartoonist and illustrator of books, newspapers and journals.
Sin embargo, posiblemente en su momento, fueron éstas dos de las actividades que más popularidad debieron de proporcionar al artista, pues no debemos olvidar que el chiste –una denominación que no agrada demasiado a los ilustradores del humor–, la caricatura y la ilustración gráfica en general han gozado desde siempre del favor del público. Los periódicos y revistas, desde hace casi dos siglos y hasta hoy en día, suelen colocarlos en algún lugar especial hacia el que desean que el lector dirija su mirada porque, en numerosas ocasiones, un chiste o una ilustración, ocupando tan sólo unos centímetros de papel, puede llegar a decir mucho más de lo que se cuenta en el resto de la publicación.
Ex Libris Xavier Bóveda. Orense, 1922
Paradójicamente, el humor y la ilustración –dos de las facetas de Cándido Fernández Mazas, como acabo de señalar– y, por tanto, los humoristas y dibujantes para el medio impreso, no han encontrado todavía un hueco en la historia y crítica del arte, equiparable a otros artistas. El carácter efímero, una estética que a menudo no se corresponde con los parámetros al uso, la referencia a una realidad inmediata y pasajera, un vehículo físico multiplicado por centenares de miles de veces y los prejuicios sobre la validez artística de lo lúdico, son algunos de los aspectos que empañan una relación que podría ser más trascendente y respetuosa. Pero, precisamente, todos estos aspectos en manos inteligentes, pueden transformarse en una estrategia a través de la que es posible transmitir mensajes complejos y contundentes, estableciendo elaboradas relaciones entre el lenguaje visual y verbal, que sirven como potente instrumento de crítica y enseñanza. El chiste, la caricatura, la ilustración, en general, son también documentos históricos que actúan como radiografía social y política, al mismo tiempo que son una manifestación artística y literaria, pues toman forma de narración en imágenes.
Possibly so, and in relation to Cándido Fernández Mazas, maybe you joke and drawing illustration can be considered two of the most genuine of this multiple artist demonstrations, and somehow synthesize a work unfolded fluidly between the plastic field and literary, as always he fluctuated between his vocation as a painter and writer.
Furthermore, and in relation to the humor, although Fernández Mazas come to this area for reasons of economic survival (given the limited possibilities for an advanced artist offers the ourensano panorama) -and if we ignore what he says his brother Armando also of its intention to commit politically[2]- his foray into him, would unleash a social and political concerns that generally fall outside its aesthetic thought, as often and from this, he claimed the purity of the artwork and independence of reality, underscoring the inability of the artistic act to apprehend fully ( "a real apple is an apple never painted"[3]), Because Mazas and has as his brother pointed out: "Not interested in the literary expression of the reality of the everyday, the commonplace: Seeing and understanding can be replaced by premonition, intuition or dream."[4]
Of course, as is well indicated Arturo Casas, in a text that is included in this catalog, Mazas was close to Trotskyism and Trostski the revolutionary process involved no sacrifice no didactic propaganda art.
In any case, we must understand the different positions in a context of discussion on the role of the artist, the artwork and its social function. Through humor, and perhaps unintentionally, Mazas resolves the conflict between pure art and engaged art, meeting, somehow, with one of his statements: pictures must be in vitality and painting: life trapped in an order.[5] De este modo, y con sus dibujos de humor, con sus caricaturas, aprisiona en un orden la realidad social y demuestra su implicación en el momento que le ha tocado vivir, marcado por siglos de corrupción política y de decadencia económica y social. Porque para él la caricatura es una manera de manifestarse en política y de rebelarse contra la situación, en este caso, del país en el que vive. Así lo subraya cuando hablando de la historia de España –“un pueblo de folletín”[6]- it refers to Goya, as one of those few blasphemous voices have been raised in the Iberian people, "" The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters "". Goya has to invent the cartoon to protest politics: it has to move away from its plastic concretions to give strong knocks on the empty national experience. "[7] The same is probably what makes Mazas and that is why, after his return from the first trip to Paris in 1925, starts his career as a humorist.
La obra humorística de Mazas surge, pues, en un período histórico –la dictadura de Primo de Rivera– difícil desde el punto de vista político (se suprime la vida parlamentaria, se reprime a los sindicatos, se establece la censura previa, etc.), pero tal vez por eso, “favorable” a un humor crítico que se convierte, seguramente, en la única manera de poner en evidencia una situación cada vez más imposible de soportar. Y ahí es donde el artista gallego, enlaza con una corriente de humoristas iconoclastas e inconformistas que desde el siglo XIX venían arremetiendo contra una España en franca decadencia, corrupta e injusta: Mariano José de Larra “Fígaro” que en su Talkative pobrecito[8] will highlight the delay and Spanish incultura; Ibrahim claret (pseudonym of Gonzalez Brabo) since the Guirigay[9] He lashes out against the excesses of the regency of Maria Cristina; Ortego with his cartoons for Gil Blas; Cilla,[10] first collaborating with cowbell[11] and then The vineyard, The wasp Y Comedian Madrid among other publications- with incisors drawings; Democritus (pseudonym of Eduardo Sojo) and Mecachis (pseudonym of Eduardo Sáenz Hermúa) that from the newspaper the Mutiny[12] They will fight clericalism and monarchical abuses, and so on and culminating in the splendid work of Luis Bagaría, who on occasion has been compared to Mazas.
From the humor, "Dichi" (one of the pseudonyms used by Cándido more in their task of cartoonist) castigates the primoriverista dictatorship but also the pseudo--Spanish imagination, centralist better- that has served to shelter absurd topics around to the periphery "[13] the "incongruous Iberian people"[14], A Spain that is "not a people of history, but a people of folletín"[15] but also it attacks a villager haggard and Galician nationalism.[16]
And if the state found Spain Galicia in general and in particular, precise humor as a safety valve and / or weapon of denunciation, the picture of the most advanced art is also prone to it. Thus, it should be remembered that artistic and literary avant-garde of the first quarter of the twentieth century perceived humor as a resource to transgress bourgeois values. Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists -and then ultraístas Spain, which was close Mazas through collaborations in magazines like Alfar, Of which more front hablaremos- use humor as a weapon with which to ridicule morality, politics, love, social conventions, etc., emphasizing its low credibility and validity as reflect that after a war as -the suffered the first World war can be no other way out before the harsh reality of a civilization that has left the race a toll of countless victims and principles that no longer serve to reclaim their lives.
Alfar Magazine cover. # 35. Corunna, 1923.
While, as noted Torrente Ballester Mazas vanguards "did not satisfy him [...] as solutions, but they had left their planted spirit of problems" [17] con ellas comparte el dolor causado por la guerra, como demuestra cuando afirma: “La juventud actual tiene que pedirle cuentas a los viejos: esos viejos sin fervor y sin vitalidad qu no levantaron sus broncas voces asmáticas en contra de ese bestial espectáculo de aliadófilos y germanófilos; ese espectçaculo que nos envenenó la vida, que puso en nuestras mejillas, muy jóvenes entonces, el rojo temblor de la ira y la consciencia. […] Todo nos lo han robado y nada les debemos. Hay un divorcio espiritual tan latente que la vida empieza en nosotros. Hagamos balance de veinte siglos y mandémoslos a la mierda”; [18] quizá, por eso, Cándido vio en el humor crítico, una buena manera de hacer ese balance y empezar desde cero. Y si el contacto con las vanguardias, dejó su espíritu sembrado de problemas, algunos de ellos debieron encontrar salida en el humor porque su manera de aproximarse a éste no es la de un humorista corriente, sino la de alguien que comparte con aquellas su afán problematizador, aunque las mire con distancia.
Puede que Cándido coincidiera –salvando las distancias ideológicas– con Castelao cuando éste señala, hablando de una actividad que también practicó, que: “El humorismo interpreta la vida de una manera sincera y fuerte, no solamente plástica, sino ideológica, y así como en el dibujo puro, la forma es un fin, en el humorismo, es un medio para expresar ideas. Los dibujos humorísticos tienen otro valor para la historia, pues debajo de la risa reposa un comentario justo de la realidad”.[19]
Attitude Fernández Mazas block also perfectly with the profile of the purest humorist, that ideal humorist who leaves no puppet head, that complaint and that calls into question many of the established values because, actually, despite that this was not a territory freely chosen, his work reaches a profound truth and dignity that demonstrates, as Wenceslao Fernandez Florez said:. "Humor is simply a position to life [...]"[20] For its part, Candido said in a text published The Pueblo Gallego"When a novelist, when a true body was face to face with life faces, as Schopenhauer did, reality destroys all inclination to a better world, and can not return more than one of these ways: either the cold cataloging, or the melancholy of humor. "[21] From this second path, Mazas makes no concession to how easy or vulgar, because as pointed out by José M. Bouzas, talking about the personality of the artist, was always "unable to submit to anything or anyone for achievement." Bouzas also draws attention to his dialectic ability, "verbal violence and biting sarcasm that could reach cruelty"[22] a profile that seems to fit with the view of Baudelaire: "The Spanish are very gifted comic, quickly come to the cruel, and most grotesque fantasies often contain some grim".[23]
Pero la entrada de Mazas en el mundo del humorismo gráfico vendrá precedida por una labor previa en el terreno de la ilustración gráfica –y en un sentido amplio en el del grafismo porque a comienzos del siglo XX resulta difícil delimitar las diferencias entre diseño e ilustración –que desde el punto de vista historiográfico está aún po investigar. Sus primeros trabajos, todavía en plena adolescencia, son carteleras –de las que parece haberse conservado resto alguno–, que realiza de manera gratuita para el Teatro Principal y el Cine Apolo de Ourense.
1921-apparently he learns to Manolo Méndez- to woodcut and linoleum, and with only 18 years, began publishing illustrations in magazines, coinciding with a particularly bright for Spanish periodicals currently in general and Galician in particular.
Its beginnings are in daily The ZarpaFounded in 1920 by Basilio Alvarez -man socialist ideas and directed from 1921 by Roberto Blanco Torres who had come first in Madrid later edited in Ourense. Despite his youth, we found a Fernández Mazas already shown as a safe draftsman. -a collaborations which referirme-'ll be numerous especially between 1925 and 1926.
Parallel and since 1924 works as an illustrator in the newspaper Galicia.
These collaborations will follow others in two of the mythical magazines of the Galician cultural history: We Y Alfar.
We It arises in 1920 directed by Vicente Risco. Since its inception insists on the momentum of the Galician national identity and culture while advocates a pure art or what is the same, art for art. By 1922, Candide made some illustrations for this publication, within a few lines that bring him to the vanguards of the moment -aproximándose sometimes the Delaunay, but soon began collaborating in a magazine that seems to best fit your personality: Alfar.[24]
A Alfar He comes from the hand of his friendship with Luis Huici. It is, then, a magazine of avant-garde was born in late 1920 under the name Bulletin Casa America-Galicia. En octubre de 1923 aparece ya como Alfar, una publicación de cuidado diseño, cuyas páginas se compondrán mediante la articulación de grabado, texto y filetes gruesos, recursos que permiten establecer una clara relación entre el contenido visual y el literario. Dirigida por Julio J. Casal, ya desde 1922 venía convirtiéndose en publicación literaria, dando acogida a algunos de los más destacados vanguardistas del momento: Alberto, Bores, Borges, Dalí, Ángel Ferrant, Robert y Sonia Delaunay y el uruguayo Barradas, con el que Mazas entró en contacto.
For Alfar and since 1923, Fernández Mazas makes woodcuts clean stroke and insurance within a close aesthetic to that of Norah Borges, Wladyslaw Jahl and the very Barradas, those representative moments of ultraísmo, a literary movement that although it had some impact on the visual arts did not materialize collective orientation, although some texts that could qualify have been revealed.
They influenced by the Futurists and calligrams of Apollinaire, also they inherited some elements Dadaist Picabia and Tzara as well as the Expressionists alemanestanto in texts and illustrations. Hence the use of the woodcut and the pursuit of formal innovation that characterizes the graph of the movement, marked by the typographic experimentation and an illustration of obvious artistic character.
One year later we see as a collaborator of the newspaper Mazas The Pueblo Gallego.
Meanwhile, while performing his drawings for the press, it becomes illustrator of the books of some of his friends: The moon, the soul and the beloved (1922) Xavier dome; Aesthetic Muiñeira (1923) and The old sailor takes the sun and other stories, Eugenio Montes; Kindergarten Luis Bernardez Francis I, one of the best examples of the graph of Mazas-; Days of Dawn Bastian (1927) Alvaro de las Casas, The wind Segrel Augusto de las Casas, among others.
En todas estas obras, Mazas traza delicadas ilustraciones, la mayoría de ellas xilografías, de una gran sencillez, en las que la línea corta la negrura del fondo y es el elemento que mejor define el quehacer de artista. Cuando ocupan las cubiertas aparecen acompañadas de tipografías trazadas a mano –de evidente relación con futuristas y dadaístas– en las que cada letra tiene una personalidad distintiva, dejando de ser un vehículo neutro para convertirse en una ilustración más. El año 1925 supone su primer viaje a París y a su vuelta es cuando se producen sus primeras incursiones en el humorismo gráfico, posiblemente motivadas –como ya hemos señalado en palabras de su hermano–, por un deseo de implicación política y social que creció en contacto con los exiliados que había conocido en la ciudad del Sena. Retorna a The ZarpaAnd that return matches one year -1926- stirred for Primo de Rivera that determine processing Dr. Cashew, banishment of Jimenez de Asua, closing Atheneum and the uprising and dissolution body Artillery among other things.
Since The ZarpaMaces combat subtly but relentlessly the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. An example of such subtlety is an engraving of Republican intent, published on January 1926. Built as a collageAmong its various elements shown two crowns in the air, with compounds lettered labels in the template which can be read FragileAnd the date January 1, 1926. Stylistically close to Dadaism, remember that Mazas had met in Paris one of the leading representatives of ismTristan Tzará-, is a model of intelligence that allows you to get through unscathed prior censorship to the dictatorship submit any publication.
Fragile. Newspaper La Zarpa. Orense January 1, 1926.
And there was no way better than subtlety, though sometimes, and viewed from the temporal distance, their jokes can be cryptic, especially if you stick to the feet accompanying drawings, which often uses quotations from Homer, Santa Teresa or encomendaciones to Santa Barbara. While it may be true that, as noted by Anton Capelin, [25] parece haber una integración entre texto e ilustración, también es verdad que ésta debió ser la única manera de evitar el control censor. Como ha señalado su hermano Armando: “Esta etapa del Humorismo gráfico […] se encuentra toda ella muy condicionada por la censura gubernativa. Esto explica el desfase que a veces se produce entre la perfección y el cuidado en el dibujo y la improvisación pobre y descuidada del pie de la viñeta. Leyenda que Cándido cuidaba con talento y gracia; pero que ante el rechazo del censor y por no perder la posibilidad de su impresión, tenía que sustituir el pie de la viñeta por otro más oscuro, inocente y poco expresivo; produciéndose el desfase observado entre dibujo y texto”.[26]
However it is conceivable that possibly at the time, this gap was not such as Dichi readers shared the same context. In any case, Mazas not seem to be of those comedians who intend to provoke laughter. It better defines profile José French for real humorist to adapt: "The practice humorist active humorismo; the sly, passive optimism. That seeks the mind and heart; it is limited to achieve laughter "[27] Indeed, the Galician artist seems to find more thought and heart, for their jokesEven with the temporal distance, they keep moving something within the reader. Mazas, also seems to comply perfectly with what Thacheray said: "The humorists seeks to arouse and direct our compassion, our kindness, our contempt of falsehood, conceit and imposture; our tenderness for the weak, the poor and the miserable. Tries, with the means at its disposal, to deal with all the usual acts and of all the passions of life ".[28]
In The Zarpa, Dichi divides his work in what we might call series: Things of time and Healing Waters, Galician artists, Goya Etchings especially interesting because of the strong social content, and where the stupidity of those who do not want to see what is most evidently, among others complaint. They are very simple drawings, dud, reduced to essentials, where the volume is not looking and are an absolute modernity features.
Coinciding with its activity as a political satirist in The ZarpaIn 1926 he takes over Galaxy, Monthly magazine of Galician novels. Sharing direction with Augusto María de las Casas, illustrated under the name of Rafael Xohán. Square format is a painstaking publication of graphic, treated with special care.
Muiñada stars. Álvaro de las Casas. Editorial Galaxia. 1926, Orense
Tres años más tarde –y con la interrupciónn de su nueva estancia en París en 1927–, ya en 1929, dibuja para La Gaceta de Galicia, revista mensual fundada por Eugenio Olano y José L. Viñas Castro, con sede en Vigo, de la que sólo saldrán dos números. Cándido asume la parte artística, colaborando con Carlos Maside. El resultado de ello será una cuidada presentación, clasicista, equilibrada, en la que el espacio en blanco se convierte en elemento compositivo fundamental. Vuelven las rotulaciones manuales de Mazas, en las que la letra reclama presencia de ilustración. Desde el punto de vista iconográfico, los temas que aquí se trata son variados: campesinos, paisajes campestres y urbanos, marineros, parejas, etc., todos ellos realizados con ternura.
These collaborations will follow others, moving to Madrid in 1930, New SpainMagazine directed by Antonio Espina, José Díaz Fernández and Adolfo Salazar.
Earlier this year, it returns to the political drawing, this time in the ourensano weekly The Republic of Jacinto Santiago, where his humor is full of ferocity and results in drawings and caricatures, often full of cruelty, a cruelty that is exacerbated during the years coinciding with the reactionary Republicans breakthrough occurs in the black biennium -Leroux-Gil Robles when collaborating in the newspaper The Pueblo Gallego, with their series: Chronicles do Agro, political cartoons characters, chronicles of our time, Lerias d 'Bondo and veredes Things Galaicos, which it is, as noted by Carlos Gurméndez an "ironic beatíficaimagen of the Galician countryside."[29]
In 1933 he entered Pedagogical Missions, taking advantage of the passage of Ourense group. Pinta decorated, and performs posters, among which we have received Altarpiece of PuppetsA model of beauty, expressiveness, simplicity and vitality that speaks of a poster that may not believe in the cartel as a cry but a whisper, as gentle and delicate suggestion.
By 1934 drawings published in a number of publications: Politics -for performing very tough jokes in denouncing the dangers are exposed Republic-, New Spain, Clarity and Heraldo de Madrid. However, its activity is concentrated in fudamental magazine P.A.N., publication of trials led by Otero Espasandín, which is responsible for the artistic presentation and critical art and information. P.A.N. is a publication treated carefully in which Mazas performs illustrations of a serene classicism emanating. As is usual with him, highlights his mastery of line and simplicity of its stroke, as a result of an aesthetic thought always away from the baroque.
In P.A.N.; -and in all publications in which hallan-, drawings Mazas -despite be subordinate to an intention to complaint and diáctica and educativa- and therefore away from their aesthetic beliefs, they demonstrate many of the features your drawing more artistic. Pues si en su pintura permaneció siempre fiel a las dos dimensiones, el medio impreso parecía prestarse todavía mejor a ello. Y si siempre rechazó la estética académica amanerada y tradicional, un medio como éste no podía encajar mejor con sus principios ya que siempre ha demandado una pureza formal que va en paralelo con una tecnología que precisa de la economía de medios.
For illustration jokes and generally very essence and always emphasize that the drawing is not reality, that only evokes; but also artwork Dichi not stop talking about his choice of synthesis, the abandonment of volume, the valuation of emptiness, the search for the essential, and therefore the flight of unnecessary detail. Possibly unknowingly, from his graphic it will also bring new art that I needed Galicia. [30]
Red Fighter. Daily P.O.U.M. Madrid, 1937
Recent work by illustrator Mazas see the light in the weekly P.O.U.M. Madrid Red fighter in front -at which will be one of his best friends, Eugenio F. Granell, in the journal Distance Valencia and possibly some posters that were lost. Their drawings Red Fighter Granell will say: "[....] were admirable. That of a militiaman, I always had for a self-designed with an almost calligraphic continuous spiral line was published on a full page. It was a display of poetic skill ".[31]
Then out of nowhere and a brilliant career that has been buried and forgotten until, in libraries and newspaper archives to which one day will have come to discover the good graphic designer, illustrator and humorist Cándido Fernández Mazas was.
© Raquel Pelt RESAN. Madrid.
