Your secrets rest

the memory appears

accomplice of the time

M.B.M

I perceived Michel Blázquez paintings as a goddess' bestiary. Cosmogony where

legendary anecdotes of ancestral myths and fables of his own existential
experiences coincide in another time and another space, ego-poetic of an
overwhelmed monologue of ideas and feelings, where pagan religious symbols
interlace with emblematic figures of a hurt nationality, a lineage squandered by
time.

The religious subject-matter of medieval inspiration, loaded with humanism, with

personages and updated events, transmits to the recipient an emotive and evocative
perception of historical images, especially if they have been, as the artist,
rooted out of his original context.

Blázquez’s plastic codes - symbolic and semantics - intent to be assimilated to

the new existential conglomerate that represents the waved life in a cosmopolitan
and crushing city, a metropolis of daydreams, concrete, glass, steel, which the
"transplanted one" (or émigré) might have to assumed like his own if he pretends
to be inserted in a new figurative language, and to be incorporated to the
particular canoness of the recipient nation.

In “Metáforas de Santos”, acrylic on canvas, 1997, each of the represented

personages shows the condition of isocefalia. Throughout the painting there are
distinctive features of the medieval painting, where heads and faces are placed in
the pictorial space in dissimilar planes of depth, to denote or to repair in his
emotions and individual feelings on a more effective way. He turns them
indistinctly into real psychological portraits of the context or general plot
where the action of big dramatic intensity is developed. The Holy Cross, central
element and unifier of the action, is simultaneously an amalgam of religious
sacred and pagan references, symbol of the Christianity , symbol of the beam that
was stained with the blood of the redeemer, summary of his faith, moral and
peregrination on earth; in the crossroads of the cross, as in the crossroads of
the ways erected is the symbol of the Orisha Eleggua, the messenger between the
two worlds, the human being and the divine one, who opens the doors and the ways
in life, who controls destiny and determines happiness or calamity. As tattoos,
the cross shows esoteric dissimilar ensigns that mend us to a metal state of
evocative connections and cultural primary references. The palm, the chalice, the
rooster, the golden blow of the Statue of Liberty, each one indistinct and
simultaneously established a parable, or as the title indicated a metaphor of
multiple allegories.

In Blázquez’s painting, as in medieval painting, the use of symbolisms and a

complex iconological language is very important to denote concepts established in
the artist’s existential conscience, as well as the community or cultural
environment from which he comes. In " “La revestidura del tiempo”, acrylic and
xylography on canvas, 2009, the artist establishes a parable of images between the
venerated virgin of the yellow cloak, the Caridad del Cobre, the patron of the
distant nation, essence of Cuban religiosity, the mix of religious credence, the
pure image of syncretism and homeland born out of an amalgam of cultures, who with
a hieratic face carries with steadfastness on his arm the figure of Marti, the
apostle, the thinker, the politician, the poet, and in unison this one carrying
on his hands, as renovator trace, cutting and indelible saber, the Real Palm, the
same one that rises straight and virile between mountains and light cloudscapes in
the national shield.

The interpretation of Marti’s figure has been a constant in the work of Blázquez,
as genuine inheritor of the generation of artists who saw him born in his longed
homeland. In “Versos del alma”, acrylic on canvas, 2009, Blázquez focuses on the
image of José Marti from a human perspective, elucidating the historical leading
role of a significant personage, transfigured into a manipulated sacred myth by
the status quo propaganda. Multiple times has Blázquez approached to the figure of
the Master, always transmitting humanity, knowledge and the sparkles of a distant
homeland and a re-spilt and absorbed identity in the essential - transcendental as
a subterfuge of its alienated crisis.

In “La revestidura del tiempo II”, acrylic on canvas, 2009, the previous obvious
hieratic face demonstrates less sharpness throughout the maternal look of the
Virgen de Regla, leading image of the composition, emerging full before the
spectator, wrapped up by her celestial cloak and protected or escorted by the
beauty of the plumage of the Peacock, explicit symbol of another saint or sister
deity, equally venerated and loved by an entire nation.

In this particular work, the artist uses his skills in function of the
expressiveness and dramatism of the image, coming out of the rich brushstrokes of
acrylic paint, emerging the xylographic face of the virgin as focal point of the
composition.

The fusion of both techniques defines the work of Blázquez as an engraver by

academic formation and a drawer and painter by Excellencies. The virgin also is
carrying in her hand the Real Palm, endemic tree of the island of Cuba, the so-
called queen of the fields who raises majestic giving beauty and at the same time
utility as its trunk and tufts served to farmers to build their residences.

Blázquez, through his art, approaches and questions all that today means the
essential attributes of a socio-cultural stiff context. He explores the variants
of the already exploited cultural and national identity topics by a cosmopolitan
encompassed vision, which begins with the adjustment of his conceptual previous
language to the new context, the one where he nowadays lives along with the
adjustment of his own person to the requirements that the new society has imposed
on him. That’s the reason why his approaches does not appear to us as an absurd,
in “Fragmentos sumergidos”, acrylic on canvas, 1997, as a result of the
juxtaposition of cultural elements of origins and multiple meanings, he manages to
construct an emblematic and multicultural figure; the represented image is
revealed to us as a Mona Lisa, an urban matriarch virgin, evocation of “The
freedom illuminating the world” as allegory of his own artistic and historical
existence. Mundane goddess who shows between her hands the "garabato", Eleggua’s
symbol of power, the instrument that he uses on his task of opening ways and that
now he reveals as reminiscence of our own pilgrimage thru life.