Sacred Light of Mystery

Sacred Light of Mystery

But flame on flame, and deep on deep,

Throne over throne where in half

                                                                                            sleep,

Their swords upon their iron knees,

Brood her high lonely mysteries.

W. B. Keats 

The night. A burning torch in the darkness competes with the bright light of the stars. It is, the flame itself, the centre of the universe. It seems as though the sky lights would collapse in front of the importance of the fireside, a sacred gleam whose aim is to light up the Mystery.

Some hands are  the holding fire. The dolphins of Knossos like ink in the forearms of the one who is holding the torch. His name tastes of Greece, it is warm and kind, it outlines the image of a craftsman of colour. To pronounce it means to recall the whole Hellas, the origin of our history of certainties and enigmas, of knowledge and unconsciousness, of search and beauty, of virtue, of seclusion. It sounds like an ancient rumour.

To say Antonio Martínez Mengual means to play with synesthesia. The pigments are words that caress the verse perfection; the poem turns into a remote light where the verb changes to an intense red and the adjective becomes the latest blue stained by the sea foam. Here the soft whisper of the paint brush when tearing the canvas derives into a faraway melody, sung by men of the past.

Martínez Mengual’s vocation is a profound one; his history might be reduced to just one word: dedication. Dedication grabbed from the painting, flesh offered to poetry, soul offered to Greece and its legend. Being with him, knowing his worries that make his creative machine work, is similar to fully dive into these three universes – painting, poetry, Greece – which complete the painter himself like appendixes.

Like others before him, the painter has understood that there is no place for accurate answers not only in art, but in any other thing. They are not even desirable. It is precisely in the question, in the constant wish to wonder why, where the work magnifies, shapes up and becomes eternal. Even more, the questions are not pertinent either when reality turns into painting and stroke, when a biography is drawn. It is then when it is worth to contemplate, to be led by feeling – the music turned off, alone and in the silence of the paint’s studio – letting the colour dance start by itself, as being pushed by memories, by vivid moments, by what one aims to experience. That vibration when stepping on holy land in Athens; the shivering hands offering juicy fruit at the entrance of the temple; that cot of cots that one day, with its chaos light, and the weight of history went through the painter’s body, defining him in another way, to make him be different.

To enter the painter’s work means to face the truth: the truth he has always looked for and which supposes the ultimate effort – and unique – of all those that have been fortunate by being touched by talent. Martínez Mengual feeds us with the sweet nectar of a pomegranate, which attracts those who enjoy his work. He takes us to the irrational need to come back over and over again to the contact with his painting.

Iacchus  penetrates the enigma: he outlines a question to which no answer is obtained.

Again, a happy enigma helps me to understand everything

Albert Camus 

Once again, the hands that hold the flames of a fire that, incessantly, inquires. The silence fear of those who do not yet know, Greece concentrates on Mystery. Eleusis as origin and end of so many men, women, and children that would want to know, those that hope to enter the Telesterion to see the secret.

That is why the painter is here, almost in complete darkness. Step by step he builds up his creations, he dialogues with his Hellenistic surrounding in a procession of uncertainties that light up the heart being led to Demeter’s Temple.

He has already arrived. He enters.

Then the colours emerge, paintings that speak in different languages, enquiring from the green of a still unripe cereal ear; paintings which are dead of night of marble columns, a spark breaking the quietness of the woods, the sky full of lights and the tasty juice of a fruit that is offered as a gift.

Martínez Mengual got rid even more of whatever is superfluous to produce these works. He covered his head with a linen veil and trusted, in respectful silence, his hands to the ancient gods of the Greeks. He is in this very moment a new Iacchus, son of a heavenly Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of beautiful hair. He carries the searching light which asks without expecting an answer.

His vocation does not aim to lead others’ sight; he investigates just for himself, because he is aware that to look at least once at the sincere creation, deprived of tricks and masks, justifies all the rest. To come on this stage, kneel down in front of the magnificent light of art, is worth an entire life. Thus, his painting does not describe the intonation of the question being asked. It is expected just nude, sure, attentive. He understood that life, perhaps, is not more than that: a succession of expectancies in which, more and more deprived, more sincere, one waits for the vision of the Mystery, the moment when everything works.

Do not wish to touch any longer. Do not wish to know anything else. Here it is where the miracle becomes incarnate.

Eyes born to catch colour 

It is surprising how an only stroke ends up in nothingness

María Martínez Bautista

These latest creations are the result of admiration, reading and skill; they break up the fear of whatever is uncertain. With the freedom of one who expects only the experience of a dialogue with the canvas or with the paper, the artist leaps on the most unknown sacred origins of the Greeks. The painter is the bridge between those that are observers today and those that were observers in a remote past. He shows us an itinerary, a road to take in order to find ourselves with what makes us be human beings: the search of why, when, what for. A search whose target is not a resolution, but just the enjoyment of the journey.

In these paintings there appear many of the recurrent routines of Martínez Mengual’s trajectory; they are works that start from a physical world to move to abstraction. They are the result of the artist’s vocation to surf among emotions. In each painting the colours construct places at the same time that they represent instants, the link of existence and space, of thought and action, of whatever is human and whatever is beyond the human being. The painter’s eyes are the sieve that looks for those wonders ready to make our heart beat. The painter, himself, is in charge of turning these wonders into painting.

As a tool to know the light, all colours spring up from reality. It is a stain that communicates, speaks, whispers the secret of an intimate confession ready for those of us to share all the feelings in silence, because whatever we live in front of Martínez Mengual’s paintings must be an intimate and reserved experience. When looking at the painter’s works, one knows oneself, one outlines and finds oneself with our own self. The impulse is made thanks to the painter.

Fingers that caress astonishment

And that flame is just our life,

that also opens its eyes, and asks

whom he is looking at us, what ignited 

mystery its beauty is.

Francisco Brines

I saw him only once. I watched the painter for a moment with the sensation of feeling myself in a forbidden place: the rough touch of wood bristled his fingertips, it electrified the body. Martínez Mangual before a huge board full of bright colours; Antonio in front of Antonio himself; Antonio next to that child with his hands stained of wax, in a black and white time, which he was in charge of colouring; Antonio lost among books and paintings to which he goes once and again, and again, and again, in search of what, pinned on his chest, he is making an effort to find. Far away from everything, beyond everyone, that offspring as soft bouquet caresses his work, flesh from his flesh. The discreet eyes covered with rain.

Painting must be similar to starting off a journey that ends up in its origin: a circular trip to the centre of oneself. The artist, with his gift being rocked between his arms, is the one that can more and better arrive at that space where it is possible to touch astonishment, that final strength that moves all beings. Because when the painter, when the poet, gets rid of whatever is unnecessary and uses his brushstrokes as if they were blood, a multicolour miracle that bursts on the canvas, board or paper, becoming himself a shadow or natural figure or heavenly space standing among columns. Then, man is already infinite and he looks at himself through his work, turned into a mirror, to recognize, to recognize himself.

It is maybe for this reason that the works on display are perhaps a pilgrimage to an unknown destiny, the result of a harder search, the one whose main objective is the body own corporal margins and the boundaries are only one more step beyond where imagination, one’s mind, dreams can get to. Thus the goddesses, the shivering in the beginning, a dark cave where Hades inhabits, the temple and its enigmas, the peace of silence where everything takes place, heaven … That is why the painter – in his discreet work has signed a life of continuous dedication to the dialogue with colours –, so that we can understand through his eyes.

So that, after a dark night of the soul, as the poet would say, with the first lights close to dawn, the only thing left is to contemplate, because everything has already been found. To let one’s sight wander among the paintings with restrained emotion. Being procession, cave, and Mystery. Being holy singing. Beeing infinite heaven and at the same time burning torch dancing in the sky with the brightness of the last stars. 

Daniel J. Rodríguez

Translated into English by Cristóbal Martínez Alfaro

Text for the catalog of Martínez Mengual's exhibition "The Uncertain"