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Looking back….

Forty years ago, when Manolo Ruibal presented his first exhibition at the Chys Gallery in Murcia, undoubtedly he felt the initial emotion of somebody who has reached their target, someone who has published their first book, brought out their first record, had their first child or planted their first tree. Now, forty years later, as he looks through the pages of this catalogue booklet, he must be thinking that he has come a long way but it was worth the effort. Even as a child, he always wanted to be an artist and to do so, he had to dodge the numerous obstacles face all those that have everything against them. In his favour was his unquivering desire to reach his goal, which in the end won the battle against the former, the obstacles.

The first years in Pontevedra

To be born in Porráns (Barro, Pontevedra) four years after the end of the
Spanish (in)Civil War was an omen for most Spaniards of a life of sweat and tears – the blood had already been spilt in the three years of fratricidal battling –the worst type of war. These were the so-called years of famine, of rationing cards and sheer survival. On top of that, Ruibal came from a very humble background, which is why once can easily understand how, from early childhood, such perentory need forged rebelliousness in him, the drive of a potential artist who would go in search of life wherever life was to be found.

Porráns, a small village in Barro, fourteen kilometres from the market
town of Pontevedra and seven from Caldas de Reis: a priest, a schoolteacher, a chemist’s shop, a doctor, a harware store, one bar, the “Carballal” cinema, the San Breixo festa and street dancing. A crossroads between Caldas, Pontevedra and Moraña. A courageous mother who had to struglle to bring up Ruibal and his sever-year-old brother with nothing else but her arms, breaking rocks at the side of the road like any other man, from dawn to dusk, day after day, with no male companion at her side. Those were the years of the black market: cooking oil, flour, potatoes…simple survival. Arrested by local policement, she had no money to pay the fine so that she was imprisoned, pregnant, for one hundred days in Pontevedra. And there in prison, in what today is the Provincial District Court, Manolo Ruibal was born on the 16 th November 1942.

Harsh childhood in Porráns. At Don Dionisio’s school, he learnt to read, write and sketch his first drawings at the age of six, breaks spent at the crossroads, the crossroads where those he called the “uppercrust of Porrans” lived, those for whom his mother worked to earn a daily wage. An isolated world in an isolated, hungry and harsh Spain.

That early childhood in Monllo, next to that gift of nature known as the mills of Barosa in “A Maquieira”, forged character in him and drove him to sketch his first drawings, an activity which was not fitting for a pauper when, according to a female member of the “uppercrust of Porrans”, what he should be doing was to work, learn a trade and not waste time painting. At the age of thirteen, he left his miserable house in Monllo and moved together with his grandmother, mother and brother to a small, humble but nevertheless new abode in Cangrallo. He had to bring some money home – his mother, Preciosa, could not cope with everything and Ruibal worked here and there: a sawmill where he earned twelve pesetas a day in Barroca, a stonemason because it was better paid, a stone-breaker like his mother, felling pine trees in the local forests, and the rest of the time, drawing.

One day, he was bewildered by the sight of colour reproductions in a
pharmaceutical laboratory calendar of works of art by artists whose existence he had no knowledge of: Corot, Manet, Van Gogh, Cézanne all of that was a splendid novelty for him.

And so eventually the day arrived when, armed with his first savings, he
rode his bicycle to Pontevedra and finally bought his first canvasses, oil paints and easel. Now he resembled that retired soldier who used to spend his summers painting the landscapes of Monllo, Barro, Barosa, Constenla, from whom he received his first lessons – quite acceptable paintings, the artist now recalls.

The young Ruibal in Madrid

In 1961, at the age of seventeen Ruibal disappeared from Porráns. He got onto a train headed for Madrid with three hundred pesetas, wihtout knowing anybody, without knowing that a distinguished citizen from Pontevedra was currently the director of the Prado Museum: Sánchez Cantón. A boarding house in Glorieta de Bilbao, and then in Zorrilla street. The money ran out but the parks and subways were still available. He managed to find work in a screen printer’s shop – two hundred pesetas a week.

All his free time was taken up by looking at the masterpieces hanging on the walls of the Prado; days and hours of a self-taught natural artist, an artist that understands with great detail classical music, who has read great works of literature, especially poetry, who has built up a solid education in arts despite having only attended the school in Porrans and a few classes at an academy in Pontevedra. In Madrid, he came into contact with informal artistic circles and felt attracted by the El Paso group. He forgot that military service was still compulsory. He was sought and returned to Galicia to serve his homeland. Some time later, in about 1966, Ruibal, with little money hitchhiked towards Paris. He soaked up Impressionism, he met the Fauvists, he visited museums and art galleries. In Montmartre, he led the Bohemian life for some time and survived by unloading lorries for a job. Four months later, he returned to Madrid, but the Ruibal of Madrid and Paris was not that same young lad from Porráns who wanted to become an artist. He had become acquainted with the great masters in the history of painting, with impressive museums and grand galleries.

In 1966, he was sent to Benidorm to work as a wallpaper decorator. There he met a man from Murcia and accompanied him to his house. That was where he spent some time and held his first exhibition at the Chys Gallery, where greys, blues and glazes reveal the light influence of Fauvism. From that point on, Murcia was to become a endeared reference point in Ruibal’s life.

He returned to Galicia. Exhibitions in Pontevedra and Santiago.
Hardships which he overcame, for example, by selling beautiful art books which he had acquired through affection and effort. Again he returned penniless to Paris. From there, he went to Berne and then, as best he could work and charity, not once again he hitchhiked down to Murcia, where he held a second exhibition, this time in the Hall of Culture. He returned to Porráns and won a prize in the Biennial Exhibition in Pontevedra – the prize was worth fifty thousand pesetas. She had never seen so much money at one time. Curiously, he would never go in for any contest ever again.

Ruibal in Madrid, 1961

Study of Ruibal in San Antoniño, 1974

 

 

Pontevedra, Madrid, Paris, Mallorca and New York

In the early 1970s, he met Lola Rey Durán and two years later they were
married and settled in Pontevedra. A house and studio. Ruibal’s life became more stable and Idoya, Sandra and Preciosa were born. Lola was and continues to be that inseparable companion that provides tranquillity and rationality for a complex artist with his sometimes unforeseeable artistic decisions that lead him over and over again to discover new techniques and subjects for his work.

Madrid, Paris… but what about Roma, the eternal city? He moved there one year after getting married. Ruibal was already familiar with the Italian painting from museums in Spain and France, but he wanted to soak up that painting directly, especially ancient, pre-renaissance painting. In Rome, the artist lived and worked tirelessly, producing hundreds of drawings and paintings, some of which he ended up by destroying. His painting underwent a new change of direction. There was a break with the Expressionist style and the artist synthesised his art into a new abstraction. Sea waves breaking forcefully on La Lanzada beach or in San Vicente are reflected in informal painting, where the predominant colours on the palette are white, blue, black and grey. The exhibition held in the late 1970s in the Rayuela Gallery in Madrid is a summary of this stage in Ruibal’s career.

In the early 1980s, the artist moved house to Majorca and two years later exhibited at the Mir Gallery. Momentarily he replaced oil painting with watercolour on paper. Schematisation and dematerialisation advance and he was carried away by the painting of Renaissance and Barroque ceilings, domes and temples. The stain, the unbodily, clouds, foreshortenings all suggest a pictorial world that is more ethereal, volatile and immaterial.

Ruibal Gallery Rayuela, 1979

 

 

Ruibal  Estudio New York, 1989

In the early 1970s, he met Lola Rey Durán and two years later they were
married and settled in Pontevedra. A house and studio. Ruibal’s life became more stable and Idoya, Sandra and Preciosa were born. Lola was and continues to be that inseparable companion that provides tranquillity and rationality for a complex artist with his sometimes unforeseeable artistic decisions that lead him over and over again to discover new techniques and subjects for his work.

Madrid, Paris… but what about Roma, the eternal city? He moved there one year after getting married. Ruibal was already familiar with the Italian painting from museums in Spain and France, but he wanted to soak up that painting directly, especially ancient, pre-renaissance painting. In Rome, the artist lived and worked tirelessly, producing hundreds of drawings and paintings, some of which he ended up by destroying. His painting underwent a new change of direction. There was a break with the Expressionist style and the artist synthesised his art into a new abstraction. Sea waves breaking forcefully on La Lanzada beach or in San Vicente are reflected in informal painting, where the predominant colours on the palette are white, blue, black and grey. The exhibition held in the late 1970s in the Rayuela Gallery in Madrid is a summary of this stage in Ruibal’s career.

In the early 1980s, the artist moved house to Majorca and two years later exhibited at the Mir Gallery. Momentarily he replaced oil painting with watercolour on paper. Schematisation and dematerialisation advance and he was carried away by the painting of Renaissance and Barroque ceilings, domes and temples. The stain, the unbodily, clouds, foreshortenings all suggest a pictorial world that is more ethereal, volatile and immaterial.

Ruibal finished the decade of the 1980s in New York again. This was a
stage in his life with numerous individual exhibitions: Santiago, Caracas, Palma de Mallorca, Vigo, La Coruña, Pontevedra, Lisbon, Oporto; as well as group exhibitions in some of the above cities as well as in Madrid, Nantes, Buenos Aires, Asunción, Brasilia, and Santander.

In the 1990s, the influence of New York continues to make its mark on Ruibal. He returned to abstraction, post-formalism. Lightness, verticality and lack of gravity are all present time and time again in his paintings. He builds up a lean, immaterial, schematic style and tends towards a wall, sober and minimalist monochromaticism that is reflected in his exhibitions in 1990 and 1991 at the Emilio Leonard Gallery and the Ergane Gallery in New York.

Ruibal  Studio, Agudelo, 1994

 

 

Ruibal siglo XXI

The beginning of the 21st-century represented one of the most radical
changes in Ruibal’s artistic career. Sculpture monopolises absolutely four long years of feverish activity. The artist had never actually ignored sculpture as a means of expression but in his long and creative background, he had never any relief from his painting and from his drawings. The sketches for his future sculptures are those round pebbles that Ruibal collects from river beds, water courses and beaches and which he paints like apes that will finally be blown up and converted into large works of art..

Ruibal set up a large-scale workshop near Caldas de Reis and brought in
huge stones taken from quarries and from the excavation work carried out to build the nearby highway. These boulders were transported to his warehouse studio on enormous trucks and cranes. During these years, he lived in Pontevedra and commuted daily to Caldas. Two operators using suitable machinery and under the management of the artist reduced these megalithic boulders until they acquired the shapes previously designed on the sketches of his pebbles. This intensive work progressed slowly but surely and modern menhirs, like historical menhirs from Gargantáns (Moraña), began to take on their verticality. They rose up in honour of the prehistoric and magical art of the megalithic period.

Once the sculptures had been modelled, the sculptor turned back to being an artist and coated the granite in green, grey, yellow and burgundy. Modern menhirs, weighing thousands of tonnes each, were transferred to the Northern campus of Santiago University and there, like new cypress trees from Silos, “erect providers of shade and sleep”, were planted on the green lawns next to the Auditorium of Galicia. Eight workpieces inaugurated the 2004 Holy Year of Compostela. Pilgrims of all different nationalities arriving in Santiago became the most enthusiastic ambassadors of such a striking exhibition. It is a shame that these magnificent sculptures, like the millenium menhirs of Gargantáns, have not remained forever on the Northern Campus like stone cypress trees in recognition of the efforts and brilliant installation carried out by the regional government of Galicia. Unfortunately, nowadays, Ruibal’s menhirs are dispersed in private collections in Madrid, Murcia, Oporto, Pontevedra…

Since 2004, Ruibal has returned to painting and to working in his study in Pontevedra producing pictures, sometimes in a large format, in which the lines, gestures and simple difficulty, the aesthetic condensation of large strokes that seemed to cross the canvas with the aethereal freedom of a bird, that take up all his time except when occasionally he is able to program an itinerant anthological exhibition that will travel through different provincial capital towns.

Si sus grandes esculturas, esos ocho menhires modernos de varias toneladas, constituyeron una serie monográfica en el año Santo Compostelano de 2004, sus últimos trabajos responden también a la monografía, a la plasmación de una fauna pictórica en la que aves, peces y reptiles son sorprendidos, cual instantánea fotográfica, en el momento exacto, en la postura justa, apacible unas veces, en movimiento otras.

Esa fauna ruibalesca configura un extenso y variopinto retablo que responde a su eterna inquietud, su constante búsqueda de nuevos itinerarios artísticos. Asombra la perfección del dibujante que siempre fue. Sorprende la firmeza de unos trazos simples con los que una culebra, un banco de peces, una bandada de pájaros, una nutria, un cormorán, una jirafa o unas gallinas son plasmados en poses instantáneas llenos de vida y pujanza.

Ruibal pintor, dibujante, escultor, pero ¿hay otros ruibales? ¿se detiene el artista en estas herramientas artísticas para dar rienda suelta a sus inquietudes expresivas? Cabría responder afirmativamente, aunque sólo los muy próximos a su trayectoria creativa conozcan, conozcamos, una inquietud creadora que abarca ya unos treinta años. Me refiero a la creación literaria, especialmente a la poesía. Hay un Ruibal poeta, desconocido por ahora para el gran público, que sólo de manera intermitente ha publicado algunos de sus “aforismos”, de sus poemas íntimos, formando parte de catálogos de exposiciones. Poesía nacida de vivencias y observaciones, de páramos en los que el pincel descansaba, de horas y horas escuchando música clásica en su estudio, a la espera de las musas.

Cuando, en breve, su creación literaria sea conocida, comprobaremos que si el artista es completo el arte se manifiesta, bulle con el lenguaje de los pinceles, los sonidos y la palabra, porque Ruibal, a su manera, es un artista renacentista ubicado en el siglo XXI.

Ruibal  Caldas de Reis, 2003

 

 

Looking back, this catalogue shows Ruibal 40 years of dreams and illusions, of materialised projects, of targets that never quite made it, of constant concern and uneasiness, of aesthetic battles and painful breaks with earlier periods.

This catalogue contains a very small part, albeit highly representative, of the professional career of an artist who is, above all, a nonconformist.

Francisco J. Moldes Fontán

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