the artist’s epitaph – Normalitas

I didn’t know Guillermo.

But yes. His face, posthumous presence in the reports of friends on all social networks this week, is completely familiar.

We surely crossed into some bar in the historic district of Tarragona, in the heart of the Roman colony with the Mediterranean in the background, the same that Emperor Augusto would have contemplated two thousand years ago. Maybe we laughed together.

Things from that corner of the world, where the stories can be so liquid.

Guillermo was an artist. From Malaga. It was sweet. He made figures, sculpted towers and worlds. He was a painter, sculptor, visual poet, writer. He created sensory music, books of objects, posters. He invented the quadrangular spirocanto “of the pacifiers” of his “fantasía”, for the poets afflicted before the blank page. I saw him more than once (remember? Invention?) Pass through a colossal wooden door set in the ancient walls next to the city cathedral, where he had a workshop.

Guillermo Marín Mesa with his sculpture ‘São Paulo’ (Reproduction)

One person, come on, normalita.

This is how Maravilla, a friend who is also an artist, described him: “creator of genius and surrealist, contradictory and peripatetic character, who wandered his particular humor in this artistic ecosystem of Tarragona, so unfavorable to its fauna” .

“Balcony to see poetry”, work by Guillermo Marín in Vespella de Gaià, Catalonia (Reproduction) “Visual poems”: Espirocantos 2, by Guillermo Marín (Boek Visual, 2009 / Reproduction)

Maravilla is another complex charm. I still remember she was dancing. She danced to the sound of my concerts between Roman circuses and clusters of sources, called bougainvillea here, and I have danced with Maravilla more than once, that Maravilla is a dancer with an eternal smile, and each time as I meet her I have enormous pleasure saying “Maraviiiiiilla!” as if to evoke birds of paradise.

Like Guillermo, she also creates worlds and fables with her hands and her heart, probably over half a century ago, or since medieval times, who knows? There is something druid in Maravilla.

“The dragon of the wheel”, a ceramic work by Maravilla Sáez García (Reproduction)

His ceramic workshop, full of super-terrestrial figures, dragons and humorous eyes, on a corner of the “old hoof” overlooking the sea, was one of the first beauties that captivated me when, there is eight years old, I landed in Tarragona, my first and most beloved español house.

Tarraco for the elders, magical city of the characters of water lilies. I could have sworn that they sprang up from ancient walls, with inscriptions from another time, and that they dematerialize in the twilight of medieval alleys, of these with almost soft cobblestones thus trodden, journey after journey, century after century.

What is the coronavirus for these streets, these houses with dynamic angles and irregular porticoes, this coming and going of the sun and the moon, immutable-impermanent?

“DEP (Descanse en Paz)”, visual poem by Guillermo Marín (Boek Visual, 2009 / Reproduction)

Nothing, it doesn’t matter. The rocks chiseled and tetrified through time – nowadays, whitewashed with the terracotta beige pantone that is part of the artistic-urban plan of the historic facades of the city – are insensitive to viruses and the cries of the troops, resist to bad weather, to wear. , perpetually massaged-resuscitated by the hands of humans, those little ephemeral beings who insist on thinking that they are forever.

“The trail is in you”, by Maravilla Sáez García (Reproduction)

Not like Guillermo Marín Mesa, who died last Sunday (17th) of Covid. In the equally historic hospital of Santa Tecla, patron saint of the city, where I once came to the emergency room for a damaged “tapping” (food).

“To live,” wrote Maravilla to a friend who offered his condolences, “is to tame the feathers we collect”.

“It costs me to model sentences at these times,” he said, calling his companion back to the gatherings and the paths. “I will leave the epitaph which he had already written:” Here my circumstances rest; yo me voy * ”.
* I go. Left. Adeu **

** in català

One of the beautiful ceramic angels by Maravilla Sáez García (Reproduction)

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