cesar manrique
artist, visionary, legend.
Lanzarote would not be the island it is today without César Manrique. An unequalled visionary who had a passion for the island that, to be frank, shaped what you see today. His legacy lives on in the architecture, landscape and the spirit of the island and it's people. He was a gay man who lived openly . Perhaps this is why homosexuality is so accepted as a fact of life here.
César Manrique Cabrera was born on April 24,1919 in Puerto Naos, Arrecife.
The Manriques constituted a typical middle class family, without financial burdens. In 1934, his father bought a lot in Caleta de Famara and built a house next to the ocean. This house left a visible impression that lasted his lifetime, he remembered with joy: " My greatest happiness is to recall a happy childhood,five month summer vacations in the Caleta and the Famara beach, with its eight kilometers of clean and fine sand framed by cliffs of more than four hundred meters high that reflected on the beach like in a mirror. That image has been engraved in my soul as something of extraordinary beauty that I will never forget in all of my life."
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He participated as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War on Franco's side. His experience of the war was atrocious and he refused to talk about it. In the summer of 1939, once the war was over, César returned to Arrecife still wearing his military uniform. After greeting his mother and siblings, he went up on the flat roof, took off his clothes, angrily stepped over them, sprayed them with petroleum and burned them.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War, he entered the La Laguna University to study Technical Architecture, which he abandoned after two years. In 1945 he travelled to Madrid and entered the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando with a scholarship, where he graduated as an Art Professor and a painter.
In the Fall of 1964, following the advise of his cousin Manuel Manrique, a New York Psychoanalyst and writer, César traveled to that city where he stayed until the summer of 1966. While in New York, he would write his friend Pepe Dámaso "(...) more than ever I feel true nostalgia for the real meaning of things. For the pureness of the people. For the bareness of my landscape, and for my friends (...) My last conclusion is that MAN in N.Y. is like a rat. Man was not created for this artificiality. There is an imperative need to go back to the soil. Feel it, smell it. That's what I feel." He began to feel nostalgia for Lanzarote.
" When I returned from New York, I came with the intention of turning my native island into one of the more beautiful places in the planet, due to the endless possibilities that Lanzarote had to offer. "
And this is the present reality: It is impossible to imagine Lanzarote as it stands today without César Manrique. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, ecologist, monument preserver, construction advisor, planner of urban developments, outliner of landscapes and gardens.
Those who knew Manrique only superficially ignored the load of puritanism that ruled his conduct. Manrique was really a frugal man, he didn't drink, didn't smoke and didn't allow others to smoke next to him, he regularly went to bed very early and got up at dawn, and began work in his studio very early.
He died at the age of 73 in a tragic car accident, on the 25 of September 1992, next to the Fundacion, near Arrecife. The irony of fate had is that he would encounter death in a car accident, as he loathed the massive amount of vehicles.
Every ounce of his spirit lives on in the island and it's people, yesterday, today and forever.
"turning my native island into one of the more beautiful places on the planet"
Cesar Manrique - artist
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