Cesar Manrique

Cesar Manrique and Lanzarote, a perfect symbiosis that offers the rest of the world an expression of art amongst the volcanic peaks, taking us close to the primary, to our ancestors, and teaches us to respect the natural world.

Cesar Manrique was born in Arrecife on 24th April 1919, in no.9 Juan de Quesada in El Charco de San Gines. The family was composed of his parents, Gumersindo Manrique and Francisca Cabrera, and by his brothers and sisters - Carlos, Juana and Amparo, his twin sister. He passed his infancy between El Charco de San Gines and La Caleta de Famara, developing, thanks to his sensitive nature, a close link with the natural world. His friendship with Pepin Ramirez, a childhood friend, would mark an important note in the history of Lanzarote, as destiny would unite their two professions - painter and politician - creating ventures that would change the future of the island.

In 1938, due to the Spanish Civil War, he entered as volunteer in the artillery of Ceut, a fact that would produce sad and painful memories in the future. He began to study at La Laguna, Tenerife, but after two years he abandoned the degree to go to La Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Madrid, thanks to the grant given by La Capitania General de Canarias.

In Madrid, he met Pepi Gomez, with whom he lived for eighteen years, a relationship that was cut short by her death in 1963. Coinciding with the surrealist movements of the 1950s, he completed the murals at El Parador de Turismo in Arrecife - El Viento, La Pesca and La Vendimia - and at the airport at Guacimeta. Without stopping his visits to Lanzarote, Cesar Manrique exhibited and travelled all over the world, until, in 1965, he decided to install himself in New York. He exhibited in the Art Original Gallery of New Canaan in Connecticut and in the New York gallery of Catherine Viviano, where he exhibited three times. In these years, he lived between Lanzarote and New York, receiving artist influences from contemporary American artists, developing his techniques in collage and assemblage.

In 1968, he built his house at El Taro de Tahiche, definitively establishing his residence on Lanzarote. From 1970 until 1976, he completed several works: the murals for the Grand Hotel in Arrecife; he began work on El Mirador del Rio (1973); he opened El Almacen - later converted into the island centre for culture, El Centro Insular de la Cultura; and, in 1976, he completed the following works - Costa Martianez in Puerto de La Cruz, the restoration of El Castillo de San Jose turning it into the International Museum of Contemporary Art and begins work on Jardin de Cactus.

The period from 1976 to 1986 was a time of great artistic activity for Cesar Manrique, who, at the same time, received recognition both from inside and outside the island: Las Banderas del Cosmos and the interior design of El Centro Astrofisico del Roque de Los Muchachos in La Palma; he would create the pool and gardens at the hotel, Las Salinas, in Lanzarote; the shopping arcade, La Vaguada, in Madrid in 1983; El Mirador de La Peña (El Hierro, 1989); El Mirador del Palmarejo (La Gomera, 1992); Gold Medal for Tourist Merit; the World Prize for Ecology and Tourism of Berlin; the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from the Canarian government; the Goslarer Mönhenhaus-Preises for Art and Ecology given by the city of Gosler; the Fritz Schumacher Prize from the University of Hanover, Germany; the Grand Cross of Civil Merit presented by King Juan Carlos and the Netherland Laureate Van D'Abeod in Holland.

In the following years, until 1992, he would finish the works known as Jardin de Cactus, the auditorium at Los Jameos del Agua, work on the Marine Park in Ceuta, and complete the Canarian pavilion for the Expo 92 in Seville.

He died in 1992 in a traffic accident about 50 metres from his Foundation, Cesar Manrique Foundation.

Cesar Manrique was a great artist who knew how to combine conservation of the natural world with the resources that the modern world offers. Thanks to his sensitivity, authenticity, imagination and force of character, he has created works that will remain with us even though we no longer have his presence.

Cesar Manrique - Biography

César Manrique Cabrera was born on April 24,1919 in Puerto Naos, Arrecife (Lanzarote), the son of Francisca and Gumersindo. His father was a food merchant and his grandfather a notary public. César preceded his twin sister Amparo by just a few minutes. He had another sister and a brother,all of whom are alive today. Don Gumersindo came from Fuerteventura of good family background and emigrated to Lanzarote.

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 vacationsin 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."

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. He returned still wearing his military uniform. After greeting his mother and siblings, he went up on the flat roof, took off his clothes, agrily stepped over them, sprayed them with petroleun and burned them.

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, he entered the La Laguna University to study Technical Architecture, which he would abandon after two years. In 1945 he travels to Madrid and enters with a scholarship, to the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he would graduate as Art Professor and painter.

In the Fall of 1964, following the advise of his cousin Manuel Manrique, a New York Psychoanalyst and writer, Cesar traveled to that city where he stayed until the summer of 1966. He was the guest of Waldo Diaz-Balart, a Cuban painter, who lived in the Lower East Side, at the time, a neighborhood of artists, journalists, writers, and bohemians. Later he was able to obtain through his cousin Manuel's friendship with the Director of the Institute of International Education, which was sponsored by Nelson Rockefeller, a generous grant which allowed him to rent his own studio and produce a number of paintings which he exhibited with success in the prestigious New York gallery "Catherine Viviano".  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 it that he would encounter death in a car accident, as he loathed the massive amount of vehicles.