CAMAGÜEY.- Alberto La Red, dear drawing master at the Vicentina de la Torre academy, worked for seven years to form his first personal exhibition at almost 70 years of age.
He made the decision with the impulse of a Quixote. La piel de la naturaleza (The skin of nature) is the title of the set of ten drawings in graphite, crayon and pastel, already in the Julián Morales gallery, at the headquarters of the Uneac. The crowded public space and filled with the affection of his students confirmed that his cause is not a lost cause.
"The drawing has been devalued." Thus he broke the ice of his scandalous shyness, for the mission of vindicating a discipline with a wide audience, but systematically absent in classrooms and competitions.
No minor art. With the effect of transparencies and optical illusions achieved with pure hand patience, La Red shakes the trained eyes and unmasks the hidden crooks in the tricks of digital technologies.
"I am slow," he said in the brief moment in which Adelante broke the boys' tail by taking it at the time of the selfies, but with the autographed catalog. And he told of his debate without an end point with the flourishing idea on the cardboard.
Art needs time. That reason finds the curator and art critic Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa to understand the long maturation process of The Skin of Nature, an idea drawn up in medium-sized works.
"It seems to be sentencing students: do not hurry, focus your ideas, find the harmony between form and content, select and master the technique, justify every detail of the composition," says Barrios Sosa.
Therefore, he dedicates the exhibition to the memory of his brother, a tireless promoter of his work, and also to his students throughout 46 years of teaching at the same school where he studied and was Vicentina de la Torre's partner.
In 2007, when the newspaper celebrated Educator's Day with an interview for his nomination for a national award, he stated that "the true graduation of a professional comes with the years."
The words on La Red have the pulse of his hand, and his work, the unquestionable endorsement for the National Prize for Artistic Teaching. If it depended on Camagüey …
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez