Ruben Manuel Beltrán Guerra - Interview

GOD'S HAND

By Reinaldo Cedeño Pineda
Translation by Ellen Rosenzweig

A reverence for nature. A naughty muse who paints and sings. May beauty never pass us by. We are all children of the same father. Manzanillo, a city that lives in his eyes. 'I learn from the landscape.'

The painter turned around... those eyes, like diamonds deep in the canvas! The man was so engrossed that he faltered, then apologized as best he could and picked up his pace.
The same scene would take place again, but this time a phrase would act as the basis for a conversation:

"This sure is a beautiful street!" he said.

The artist smiled. "Tell me, my friend, how long have you lived around here?"

"Well, since I was born."

"Wow! And this is the first time you've realized that this street is beautiful?"

The man looked puzzled for a moment, but soon offered his justification:

"Well, you see, I walk by here every day, but now I've seen all this beauty through your paintings, as if it were the first time." Just a few yards away, he took in the original view of this street in Manzanillo that slowly descends toward the sea.

Rubén Manuel Beltrán Guerra put down his paintbrush and went off to tour the city, the same city that welcomed him into the world on August 20, 1966.

THE CITY OF MY DREAMS

"I paint my city. I feel motivated by its varied architecture; I paint it because some people don't understand the beauty that is being lost. That worries me, and I'm trying to capture it in my paintings.

"I remember I was painting a tiled roof near my home, and - guess what? - the people waited for me to finish my painting before fixing it! Another time I was painting a house, and they were going to stucco the wall, and I told them: 'Stop! I'm painting it the way it is now!'

"I have a great love for Cuban architecture, and I'm horrified when I see the new concrete houses they're building, with the roof just above your head. I love cities like Santiago de Cuba and Trinidad, which are being preserved, people are making an effort. It's not by accident that hotels are being built with the characteristics of Cuban colonial architecture.

"Perhaps it all has to do with a recurring dream, a beautiful city whose details I can't pin down. Maybe by searching in cities like Trinidad, Manzanillo and Santiago de Cuba I can find my dream city. I used to dream that I could lift my feet and fly over the city. And now when I dream, I wake up with lots of energy, wide awake, because my dreams were pleasant."

Listening to him, you know he has taken root in this city, or maybe found a safe haven here. In the meantime, his childhood fantasies are intact in his mind. The cardboard pictures of Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood remained on the walls of his room until he was almost as tall as his father, although being that tall seemed almost impossible to him at the time. His dad was quite skillful at drawing, and the whole family was artistic.

"My uncle René Beltrán was also good at drawing, and on my mother's side they're all country folk, but I have a few cousins who are natural painters and musicians. My sister Georgina would draw beautifully on the covers of her notebooks, and there were even people who asked her to decorate the photo albums from their 15th birthday parties.

"I remember that when I was in second grade, a teacher would pass out crayons and ask us to draw. I had a friend named Luis whose pictures were always chosen as the best ones, but one day my work came out in first place, and during recess he picked a fight with me. When I left school, he was waiting outside with two of his friends, and you can image what happened next. I arrived home in tears, but the point was that my painting was chosen as the best that time."

But Rubén is not a man of many tears. Once he dreamt that he conquered a lion, and all the childhood fears he had were entangled in that imaginary mane and never returned.
However, he was always a bit timid, one of those kids whose hands tremble and who get a lump in their throat when they can't find the right words. That was when he would get into fights.

"One day when I was having problems, I walked down to the seashore, and I realized that the sea soothed me and no one made any demands of me there. So I started to walk down to the sea whenever I got too keyed up. Afterwards I would go over to Masó Park along the seawall, and sit on a nearby dock. One day I saw some transparent fish, and watched the pelicans as they plunged into the water. I could see the fish in their bills and pouches. And the tuna and flying fish as they stretched their fins. These are memories I treasure.

"Manzanillo is a fishing village overlooking a beautiful sea. Its light, with its contrasting greens and yellows, has influenced me a great deal. God has created a brilliant, intense light in Manzanillo, a light that doesn't disappear even in the shadows."

THE LAWS OF BEAUTY ARE UNIVERSAL, AND FOR NATURE EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE

"I studied at the Fine Arts School in Manzanillo. I did a lot of drawings and worked with tempera during my last year there. I started painting with oils just five or six years ago. My first painting was La placita (The Farmer's Market) and I painted it from my rooftop, under the sun. I hardly knew how to mix the paints properly. It's hard work for me to complete anything, but I can tell you I've lost my fear of colors.

"At school, I was told to examine a book of paintings by the great masters, but it bothered me a lot that every time I saw a landscape there were shadows like black spots, and all the leaves were shaped the same.

"This made me look at the landscape more closely. I realized that the custard apple tree's leaf, for instance, is not the same as the leaf of the avocado tree or the tamarind, nor is the coconut palm leaf the same as that of the royal palm leaf. Even the greens vary: there's green with a blue background, green with a red background, green with an ocher background. Among the Cuban landscape painters, I admire Tomás Sánchez very much."

The sands of Tarará beach, in western Cuba, witnessed his delight when he passed the entrance exam for the José Joaquín Tejada Art School in Santiago de Cuba. But his youth, his experiences and maybe his imagination - given the prospect of studying at a place famous in Cuban history - led him to follow the advice of those around him, and he chose to study at the university.

He could have chosen to become a pilot or a forestry expert, but - like a river flowing to the sea - teaching and art came together for him and he decided to major in art education. As a result, he turned into a well-trained art teacher, but not yet a painter.

"I started off by painting rural landscapes, mainly very thick woods, and there was always a ray of light, a way out to clarity, maybe a symbol.

"I created the landscapes as I painted; sometimes I would start off with one idea and end up with another. I could have a mountain in the background, but I found out that I painted mountains really well and then it would bother me to cover them up, so I would change the landscape instead."

We understand the challenge it represents to change a piece of urban or rural landscape into an artistic creation, but doesn't that limit your creativity? Don't you have to follow certain rules regarding hues and colors?

"I try to capture the landscape as faithfully as possible, because I always feel that I learn from the landscape, even though I may highlight a color or emphasize a detail. I believe that someday when I'm not in my city, in any other part of the world, I could paint a landscape of Manzanillo, because I have those elements committed to memory.

"When I compare the real thing with what I've painted, I realize that I'm really very far from it, because only God could achieve such harmony of colors. When you look at a sunset in my town, you see deep red, shocking yellow, violet next to yellow, because for nature nothing is impossible.

"Some say that colors can't be so vibrant, that you need to tone them down, but I don't believe that. You can place gold next to silver in a landscape; the important thing is the relationship these colors have to the rest of the painting. I try to grasp nature as God created it, and for me that's a source of immeasurable pride.

"The art world has taken so many roads, paths and byways, even cul-de-sacs, that there is no almighty god who has laid down the laws of aesthetics. No one has all the answers. For example, in Japan many consider Sumo wrestlers, those huge fat guys, to be beautiful; in Italy, slender women are considered beautiful; and in Cuba, women with big fannies are considered beautiful. Anybody can say, 'I don't like this painting,' but personal taste is one thing and beauty is another. Nature is capricious, and yet it does everything well."

How do you select your landscapes? How do you take its pulse?

"If I like a location, I go in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, to see when I like it the most. I like to be in contact with nature when I'm painting. First I sketch it and discover new things, even if I've seen the place a thousand times. And millimeter by millimeter, I get in touch with what I'm going to paint. I like to be nearby the landscape I'm going to paint, to talk to people, although of course there are moments when I'm silent, deep in concentration. Some people have invited me to paint atop their roofs, or on their balconies.

" The great Da Vinci once said, 'Beware of the masters; nature is wiser.'"

The market is sometimes very lenient with landscapes and landscape painters, at least a certain part of the market.

"In my case, I paint for pleasure, and that's why it's so hard for me to sell my paintings. I hate to give them up, because they're part of my life. They're unique pieces in which I've created things I never thought I could achieve, things I amaze myself with. Not everybody is fortunate enough to make a living from something he enjoys.

"I have to learn how to release these children of mine. You conceive them and bring them up, but they have to have their own lives, and I have to pluck up my courage and let them exist apart from me."

Do you think there is a common thread that ties together the painters from eastern Cuba, an element that makes them unique?

"I've met people who live in Havana and other big cities, in the United States and in other places... and they always have this longing for their hometown. Manzanillo is a small town, but people have an attachment to their hometowns, wherever they may be.

"Painters from eastern Cuba are very influenced by their natural setting and by their social and cultural characteristics. We grew up, at least in my case, with a sense of solidarity, a love for the land... It would be better not to talk about differences, to emphasize the differences between regions or countries, since we are all children of the same father."

Talking about the different regions, do you feel excluded from the galleries in Havana?

"I've never painted for a gallery or a competition. Some people I know, when they paint to get accepted by a gallery or to win a competition, feel very disappointed when they lose. The quality of their work may even suffer. The prize I'm most interested in comes from the public, and many people like my paintings. Maybe the reason they like me is that I've never tried to pander to them.

"I've come to the conclusion that whether or not the world likes what I paint, I will keep painting. For me it's like breathing, I couldn't stop painting no matter what."

UNBREAKABLE GLASS

Manzanillo has an eternal dialogue with the Gulf of Guacanayabo, where the island opens up like a crocodile's jaws. Indeed, given its long and narrow shape, Cuba is often referred to as a crocodile.

Officially founded on July 11, 1792, Manzanillo was named after the manchineel tree (Hippomane mancinella lin, called manzanillo in Spanish), which was very abundant along its coastline. Today, there is only one such tree left; the rest had to be chopped down because they are highly poisonous. According to historians, its resin was used by the native Indian population to make poison arrows.

Cuban biologist Juan Tomás Roig pointed out that the tree "is very caustic and some people are so sensitive to its effects that just resting in the tree's shade can lead to skin rashes and swelling."

But Manzanillo is a land of culture, not poison. Orto magazine, published in Manzanillo from 1921 to 1957, is an indispensable source of information about the history of Cuban culture. In that periodical, a group of celebrated intellectuals including Juan Francisco Sariol, poet Manuel Navarro Luna, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Julio Girona Sr. and Julio Girona Jr. brought together the best of Cuban and Hispanic culture. Furthermore, they declared themselves "lovers of the prestigious city that was their cradle and that makes them proud to call themselves residents of Manzanillo."

This pride remains undaunted. Indeed, the dance band called La Original de Manzanillo and vocalist Cándido Fabré, known for his talent at improvising lyrics, continue to sing the city's praises. The same is true of many popular musicians throughout the years and the whole population, which enjoys concerts in the city's central park, under its Moorish gazebo patterned after the Patio de los Leones in Granada, Spain.

This city is famous for its big hand organs - relics in these days of synthesizers - with their cranks, bellows and music stamped on long, perforated cardboard rolls. This traditional instrument was brought from Paris, took root and was skillfully manufactured and played by the Fornaris and Borbolla families. In the 1980s Manzanillo became a force for renewal in Cuban popular music.

All this cultural tradition flows through the veins of Rubén Beltrán, who says he has a "naughty muse." In addition to painting, his artistically versatility is expressed in stained glass or a pair of shoes. "Sometimes I even write a song in my dreams." In that regard, he's started writing down the songs he's been carrying around in his mind, although there are so many of them that they would fill several books if he committed them all to the page.

He's constantly marking the beat with his hands and feet, or singing a melody. He's tall enough to have been a fine athlete; what he really wanted was to be a ballet dancer, but that flew in the face of cultural prejudices. He seems to hide behind his carefully braided hair and to derive strength from it, like Samson. And without a doubt, those dreadlocks have shrouded him in mystery and are now an inseparable part of his image.

While still a young artist, he won a prize in the Bacardí competition in Santiago de Cuba, to which he credited his personal technique of identifying deeply with the landscape, as if he were looking at himself in a mirror.

It all started with a drawing he was assigned to do, leading him to a life full of landscapes. He will never forget that initial moment:

"I was a very clumsy student; it was hard for me to draw a straight line and I used to mess up all the colors. I think they wanted me out of the school, especially one of the teachers. So I was given a very difficult task: to draw a plastic tumbler in the foreground, on an angle and through which one could see the background. It was placed on a high stool covered with a cloth, with folds and everything. Behind the tumbler was a white glass bottle turned on its side, a fat green bottle with a long neck, and behind that another bottle that was brown, almost black.

"I had to do draw it with a pencil, as if it were a black-and-white photo. It was very difficult because glass reflects so much light, transparencies, brilliance and shadow.

"Since then, I've wondered why I wasn't nervous, since I was separated from my classmates. The first thing I did was to tell myself that I'm good, that I could do it, but later on I came to believe that I was guided by something greater than myself.

"When I walked in and saw the still life, it looked so difficult. Instead of giving up or telling myself, 'I can't do this,' I put myself to the task. It was a test worthy of a fourth-year student, but I felt prepared, as if I had done it before. I felt like when you dive into water, and everything seems so far away."

So what happened?

The teacher I told you about asked me if I had been alone the whole time, and I said, 'Of course.' So he had no choice but to give me 100 points, the highest grade. I believe that I didn't actually do the drawing myself: I was helped by something greater than me, to teach that man a lesson."

You say that you have felt God's presence. Have you ever seen him? And have you ever tried painting God?

"I've never seen God in any painting, but I've felt his greatness, his immeasurable power and love. I don't intend to paint God, nor worship the creation over the creator. I would like him to like my work, I would be content with that.