Victor Manuel Guerra has been retracing the paths of portraiture for some time. First he was establishing types of scenarios in which symbols and circumstances implied the association of metaphors, myths and daily actions, unraveling the characters and natures of men and phenomena.
By then, Victor’s colors, values and brushstrokes, were not what they are today. The young artist brought forth intensity and multiplicity of mixtures. In these presentations of ins and outs and masquerades, the figures already appeared starring in the composition – aided by backgrounds like appoggiatura – and from whole bodies or faces achieved our concentration on individual speeches or collective coincidences, which beat behind the mask.
The intention to decipher multiplicities and uncertainties continues to constitute one of its main starting points today, only from exercises of discovery as a result of direct experience with the model, in flesh and spirit, without other mediations than the emotional outpourings, or the image most authentically revealing of the circumstances or state of the model.
The meticulous study of the genre, from the historical inheritances of the great European portrait painters and the indisputable mark of his teacher Juan Miguel Suárez Rodríguez, have become naturalistic, realistic and hyperrealistic appropriations, which have been gaining in certainty -technical and expressive- .
The backgrounds are increasingly integrated with greater relevance to the figure. The bodies, faces, skin, limbs, gestures and secondary elements achieve increasingly greater clarity depending on the notions to be evidenced. The emotions are becoming more and more palpable.
The spirit of portraits increasingly provokes our need for rapprochement, exploration and exchange.
Through his paintings, Víctor Manuel reconfigures his perceptions and reveals not only his own angels and demons, but also his tools and language.
Yania Collazo González,
specialist at Council of Visual Arts of Pinar del Rio, Cuba
May 2019
