Manuel Diez Matilla : a forgotten fate

 

 

Psychoanalysis of the work of Manuel Diez Matilla

 

First part

Revision in Saturday, December 8th, 2012

By Christian Diez Axnick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trinke noch ein Tröpchen,

Trinke noch ein Tröpchen,

Trinke noch ein Tröpchen,

Aus dem kleinen Henkeltöfchen.

 

 

I. Introduction

A) Foreword.



Better explain the life of a big artist.





An author who could well get closer to ideas of Manuel Diez Matilla would be in
priori brilliant Villiers de l’Ile Adam, who gets closer he even to Goya in his
sarcastic and ironic vision of the death. Authors poetic as Rimbaud and
Verlaine are rather close him, in the sense that they have for him frequented
the risk groups. My father liked very much laughing at the death and the old
bone which we would make.

 As he at the end of his life they were at the lowest.

Paul Verlaine died in Paris, street Mouffetard, not far from the apartment who also
died Hémingway. Everybody remembers sound " turn, turn, merry-go-round
horses! " That he had borrowed from Antonio Machado, one of the biggest
Castillan poets of the beginning of the last century.

Freud is one of first to try a modern approach, in particular of the work of art. His
attempts are precious to understand better and encircle this big painter whom
was my father. Ionesco is also a big critical, nonconformist and theatrical
mind. He represents the theater of the absurd with Beckett.

Victor Hugo sang Toro, his home town, in Torquemada, because it is at the same time
the home town of my father, and that of the victory of king Sanche. A church is
dedicated to him in Paris. Manuel Diez Matilla, you should not forget it here,
constitutes a peak in the research and the pictorial expression arisen from the
stirs of the impressionism.

Spanish painter in the purest sense, he will be much more pro-French on the other hand
towards the end of his life. And even extremely pro-French. Still that he felt himself
" Buen español ".

This previous picture is a view of Toro, with Colegiata at the top. Duero is below
the city, the Téjar, the family property, dominates him and offers a
magnificent view.

Duero is in Spain, and as well in Portugal, that Mekera is in Algeria, a proud and
sudden river.

When he was childish, my father came down from the city to the Téjar, family brickyard,
by running and in shorts. He worked to the brickyard a lot and manipulated the
clay, made of small statuettes.

In one of the houses with side of hill, sometimes he stopped by rising or by falling,
because the owner of this one had one of the first long-playing records.

 

 He thus listened to the golden voice of Tino Rossi without growing tired near this house.

Her sister, Angelita, whose head we above see exceeding to the right, is the first
one of the family must to have come work in France for the baroness Goury de
Roslan (been born Moltke) about whom I have already spoken in the manual worker
of introduction. My father followed, then his two brothers came then. The one
with his wife Mere, not to confuse with the friend mathematician of Pascal,
also worked all his life for the baroness, it is Vicente. Other one is Vénancio,
who was mason. His sons, that is my cousins, are Bernardo, Ramon, José-Mari and
Marie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The property of Mrs baroness, that took back Seydoux, the friend of Mitterrand. Indeed, the
baroness, who was very rich and possessed quite a lot of lands in the region,
in particular some wood, sold Frogères and left to Lavandou, to Bormes, with
Méré, Vicente, Angel and javi. Seydoux, a big French billionaire, made a little
his debuts by buying back her the castle, who he received François Mitterrand
according to what we said to me, because both men were very friends. It is the
beginning of the caviar left, and a shape of transition, because it is little
for us the end of a big period of freedom. We had enjoyed the solognote nature
during years. Often went down to us the weekends to see Angelita and the rest
of the family with the fiat 238 of my father. We passed by orléans, then la Motte-Beuvron.
Frogères was a paradise who we lived and went out. We saw rabbits, deers to
cross the forest paths, the wild boars. The real strong of the nature was
long-lived and impressive.

Mrs baroness eventually grateful to sell, and she made it for good price. Let us
recognize humbly by François Mitterrand to have played also not promoter's
role, but to have been useful for the development of these land heritage. The
baroness was of very big one and very rich family.

 

This alternation is for us the end of an immense illusion and an immense dream
however.



For the anecdote, once or the impresario of the opera singer Teresa Berganza had a
small mechanical boredom on the périf, he had called on to Ramon, who holds
another garage nowadays, either in Saint-Mandé who he always has his detached
house but to Bagnolet. Ramon is the second son of Vénancio, the mason. Bernardo
is the elder son and José-Mari the younger son. The last one is a girl, a bride
and a mother of two girls today.

My father was very close to her sister, even if she was not easy to live. Their
mutual links were strong and powerful. It was a lioness, she really represented
old Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

 Freya Von Moltke left a picturesque book who she redraws the life of her family,
which was the main important family opposite to Hitler in Nazi Germany. His
title is " Errinerung an der Kreisau ", and it redraws the story of
the house who has longer lived the Moltke family.

This work is rich in teachings at the same time on the relaxed rhythm of life and
the vicissitudes of the German opposition of period to the current regime. The
baroness went down at the same time Moltke, but also I said it also had a
family ties although taken away with Joseph, the brother of Napoleon, the one
who seems to me you he was a king of Spain in a moved back time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On this photo I am very young together with my father. My father liked very much the children. He
painted all the kids of the district. The following cliché is still older.
Today I am all the same 49 years old. There I am less than 8 years old. Which
joy of life lived in me in its presence, and which unlimited admiration I felt
for him, what was less the case of my two brothers.

 

Below on the left, my brother David, rather young death. We see it, Manuel Diez who
was him even a very early artist and of a strength as a trust in him little
common, liked very much the children. On this photo, one of the rare very young
of him, he seems to relax and to share a moment of relaxation with us. David
was a little the evil liked by the family, the most fragile. His end
will be tragic and dark. He died a few years after my father.

Manuel Diez, if it was a rather conservative and authoritarian man, and a thoughtful
and very affectionate father, was not less a masterly and incredibly modern
artist. His inconceivable career gives evidence of its high pictorial degree.

Never the biggest control was missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the photo of the top, he has neighborhood about forty. He smokes. He will stop the
tobacco radically and all at once a short time later. I look like young
sportsman there. I am also stopping.

I take nicopass with doctor Garnier.

I added up all the same about fifteen years of high-level sport, in rugby and in
athletics. I worked in particular two years with Sonny Lipson, the main rival
of Guy Drut in his big period.

Two only national titles which escaped to Guy Drut, that of 60 m and the 80 m hurdles in
younger child, him we were delighted by Sonny. Their rivalry was important, and
both were young Olympic hopes. It is probably the hardest two years of my
career, that had to drive us to a championship Ile-de-France by team. Sonny was
a big representative of the contribution of the athletes of color in the
national sport, it was a very big technician, even if he was of small size.
Then, it is true that the top athletes benefit from care, from a whole medical
follow-up in correlation with the works of the biggest researchers. A golden
medal in the olimpic games as that of Drut, who took advantage of scandalous
arbitrations in front of Lipson, costs on average the 3 billion centime
trinket, the price of a helicopter lark. Harald Schmitt is his big successor
also, Guy Drut being a big champion. Our Guy Drut national as we say.

There were even movies of realized highlighting the sports rivalry between Guy and
Sonny, of whom a thriller with dialogues of Michel Audiart. I played the rugby
three quarter wing right, face also to the son of Guy Drut, who played
Coulommiers, quite a lot of years later.

In rugby I beat all the same champions regional, interregional, almost even
national. I even played holder in the back in a team of Gonesse which counted
until 8 internationals, what is nothing. Many tournaments gained also, and by
teeth left with the fight, but also because of sweets.

I remember time or my father came to see us playing with Catalan friends.

He liked for nothing, even sometimes for the sport. What he liked most, it was
however the gymnastics and the swimming. I know well the gymnast Isabelle
Sévérino, because I worked at the North Engineering, society the manager of
which his father was in the time. I made in particular plants of purge and
treatment of water

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On this family photo, my father is in the prime of life, he is at the height of his pictorial and
artistic career to place better the things of the chronological and
psychological point of view.

He doesn't miss a thing in the job. Its vista, its strength is exceptional. Its
sense of the color, the colors, the light is then indescribable. I would not
hesitate to say it, he is then one of bigger painters of his time, and will be
one of bigger than the century will leave which passed by. Rare
are the Spanish artists who so much impressed me that he.

 

 

He evolved throughout his life by making as a kind of transition, of translation,
primitive Spain which oppressed him and half deaf depiction (a punch of a
priest while it had dozed off in class) towards France is in hiding of freedom
and new expressions.

 

We feel him very relaxed, very comfortable on this photo, as freed.

It will not still be the case a little later. For me, in all
honesty intellectual, he is then as I already said it one of the major artists
whom counts France. All in all he already practically has to prove nothing
more. He knows absolutely how to make everything, and he makes even things
which nobody else makes. We can say that towards this time, towards the second
half of the 70s, he is at least the bigger painter as regards the cellulosic in
France. And even in the oil, in the pastel, in the water (acrylic), he already
makes reference face of the end of the 20th century, the poet in the
unforgettable inspirations. In fact, to be precise, the biggest of his career
follows and accompanies thirty glorious (on 1948-1978 it seems to me). He built
up to itself a just style towards the end of thirty glorious.




B) Contemporary World

 

 

 I would say that it is one of for me last serious artists, we see it, we feel it
very well, even if at the time of his death and shortly after, I knew
personally some painters destitute, lost in the dungeon of the history. I think
of the Corsican painter Xavier Roussel, who was the godfather of Nina, my
friend of time, or still to a very good painter as Claude Rigel, whom Nina had
made me known, and who had specialized on paintings of Venice which he sold to
Drouot. I want to say, all these small painters and dark and abandoned artists
who sometimes are excellent in certain domains, in compositions and particular
colors, and with which we get acquainted by friend interposed. I also
knew very good comic strip writers and Héroïc Fantaisy, the Martin-Boileu
Parcheminée, with whom we were very friends during long years before them
parents leave late Arnouville to go in the South. The older brother is in the
drawn band.

The fate takes unexpectedly care to bury some goodwill who stay in us. He
outclassed and partially federated his time. He had this stature, this
undefinable scale in which I try hard to return the minimum of tribute which is
him of and which I wish that the public can have access. . It is
moreover the main reason which urged me to undertake this work of
popularization.

Manuel Diez was before any a big thinker and a big poet, he took ceaselessly marks in
the pencil in his studio. He always ran the brains, thought of things. In this
hard job, we do not have the right to make a mistake about interpretation, we
have no right to make mistakes. The stamp is important, it shows the capacity
of the artist to overcome at the same time its prejudices and its
contradictions from period to an other one.

 

 

II. After Manuel Diez

At the end of 2007, with Hanifia, my wife, and Christa, my mother, we visited Günther
Grass to the Georges Pompidou Center, I noticed when this one dedicated her his
book (which title is " Onion skin " in French) at the end of the
debate of the relative fragility, the vulnerability which is the one of a big
writer of German language. He calls reminds a little Schiller or Goethe. The
enemy old age is often synonymic of weakness, even confusion. The hope of a
better world makes live softly. Curious book which I have not read yet. The
proverb says as for him: " does not put you between the onion and the skin
" (do not mix you affairs of others). Grass
makes very long sentences.

In the Centre Pompidou, a debate gathered a small room. The debate which we did not
attend till the end was dedicated to Fassbinder, and to its resumption of the
book Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Fassbinder takes back this book
which fascinated him in a movie of 15:30 
neighborhood. We crossed extracts of movie of Fassbinder there. Amos
Gitai, the Israeli film-maker was there, and Anna Schigulla was not there but
she answered an interview by video.

Günther Grass lives to Gdanzk, former Danzig. My mother is native of the old East
Prussia as he. She was born to Kreis Gerdauen and lived to Momehnen, I do not
know if I write correctly the spelling.

Towards the end of his life, my father made me certain reflections of the kind : "
traga bien el humo " (swallow good the smoke), or still " Then,
proussien !? ". He had stopped smoking for a long time, and I smoke even
until today. I try to stop. I do not discourage to arrive there.

However, as I explained it, I knew a long sporting career of rather high level. When I
was in the army, I got acquainted with a young international back which was
called Chéron and was of Mautauban. He had something for 8 capes, and his
father was also the former back of the club France. I had offered him two
records of Flamenco, one of Roman el Granaïno, and the other one of José Peña.

And well in the match which the colonel had organized towards the end of our
service, I played back in front of him, and we eventually stood out as often in
my team on the score of 16-9. I crossed a drop goal and brought a essay or
marked, I do not know any more exactly, within last quarter of an hour. It is
the scenario which I often knew.

There low in Germany the atmosphere was extraordinary, we were a sacred band of party
animals and clowns, person could not pass in the corridor without taking itself
or giving slaps. They were perpetual roarings. The ch’tis ( persons from
northern France ) were adorable people, in the irresistible accent and mold of
a strong spirit of good-companionship, They were all the horizons
and any confessions, but united in a single linguistico-slang and cultural
block.

In spite of the strong solidarity which was our, because we were friends' band, I
was tortured at the end by the service. I even killed them a royal cobra with a
flick knife bought from fleas. The officers did not make presents. Politics of
burned earth obliges.

However, even if my grandmother died following the amputation of a leg during my service,
we let go to me all the same in her funeral to Krefeld; I kept an excellent memory
of my section, the 84/06.

 

We practically made only the binge during 12 months, even if never stopped us
yomping. Which fair, which fun.

And it was already years before Danny Boom's movie, Welcome to the ch’tis goes out.

" Ravise at lavette quand tu finque ", said to me you we, because I smoked. I have never managed to stop good
time for quite. David, who was a taxi driver for a while before his death,
drove Michèle Morgan and Gérard Oury, who smoked very also I believe. My father
was a fanatic, a madman of Michèle Morgan, he even went to see one of his plays
and went to meet her. She spoke to him.

 

 A few years after the disappearance of my father and my brother David, I have to say that I got married to a Muslim to
whom I am for more than 12 years. We got married on September 11th, 2000, on
one year to the day before the attempts of the World Trade Center.

We manage to hear each other even if we are not of the same confession because we
come from different horizons.

The Muslim brothers in Algeria are passionate people, full of imagination, poetry
and opened on the outside. The Islam is especially passed on by oral tradition.
A Muslim introduced me and recited the verses of the Koran while I was
stretched out. Nevertheless I am a roumi, but I have to say that I
have a big admiration for this religion which always tries to progress and to
interest the believers in his human originality.

It are the poorest who preach, the imams, the Muslims who make known this religion and
introduce it to the others. It is really a religion of the people, as at our
home the Christianity in Old-Castile.

My wife is rather authoritarian, she hates Bush, Sarkozy and other Bouteflika, that is
the major part of the most powerful Jewish leaders of confession of the world
in the contemporary point of view, those who have most power and go according
to their decision.

Sarkozy is a Hungarian Jew, stemming from the nationalism of Kossuth, one of the worst
of Europe. Bush stained with blood Iraq and war threat the Arab countries which
do not suit to him.

Mrs Palahvi, the Begum, answered an e-mail that I had sent to her to console her
with the disappearance of her daughter Leila. The Pahlavi are a very old
scientific oligarchy in Iran, they are renowned, very known astrologers in the
Arab world if I do not make a mistake. They detained for a long time the keys
of the Persian Empire. In France, the singer Mylène Farmer made a song on their
daughter.

Chinese they it seems invented the formal music by calculating the distances between
planets

Today Bush who threatened Iran and whole world by their fundamentalism left the power.
Sarkozy undertook Pharaonic works of plumbing and air conditioning to settle
down in the Invalides. My wife hates him, he dismissed everybody. Its method, its
secret weapon is to dismiss the enemies.

Bouteflika, who is a man of the Mekera, native of Oujda in Morocco, is very popular, but
the corruption rages everywhere in the country. The spiral of the crime is very
difficult to stop. Algeria, 34 million inhabitants, 180 billion recipes while
resulting from some gas and from some oil who benefit only 1000 or 2000
well-to-do. The pension is unevenly distributed.

The only one who seems to me however a statesman of strong stature is exactly
Bouteflika. He has
this advantage on both other than he gained splendidly elections, what puts an
end to the discussions and to the debates.

Let us say that Algeria is a people's republic and that he has a very powerful
legitimacy.

But he places his pawns in all the interesting posts. It is as usual in politics, each
places his.

I was interested in the case of Algeria, which is the first country of Africa or I go,
in the sudden and short floods of Mekera. A short rain is enough.

At the beginning, I had thought of the use of pumps, but it brought us rather to the
PVC than to the cast iron. Then, geologists me we say that we adjust these
questions by means of natural drains. This is the way we get the water. But
geologists' s offices do not work and do not leave on the same bases of
calculation. Moreover the results are not the same from a office to the other
one, only in France. Then, from a country to the other one, the studies differ
all the same rather appreciably.

I believe, having worked as account manager, that it is a very good subject for
the engineering consulting firms of future. To domesticate the water, to drain
it, to get her to treat her then is one important task.

All these digressions to say that in a way, we could make us the trial be a
mediocre generation which gave way in the others or gave up exercising any
power. It is not completely true and it is advisable to moderate this kind of
point of view.

For example when I renewed the apartment of Montebello, which come down from an
Italian class bound to the nobility, they made plays and representations for
the tsar Nicolas II.

I am and sometimes accelerate the movement by trying to be relevant and innovative,
I was sometimes a fuse, because I often made the Greek to the studio, finally
almost always, and also the main support of my father.

I was the only one to follow him everywhere and enthusiastically in its deliveries
with a self-abnegation without defect, there who it was not the case of my two
brothers and my mother. For example the year when he painted in the Creeks in
Marseille and in the Camargue, and executed a lot of pastels, we spent one
month of extraordinary holidays both. We were alone to have risen in the
mountain when there was an important fire, and we have of to get down again
rocky cliffs with the unchained tramontana. It is to say what make and the
risks which sometimes take the artists to go up to the end of their job and
their brimming passion.

I read Boris Koseleff's book, "Rasputin", in German, and I have to say that the
Starets ( religious Russian), which was a farmer native of Siberia, the main thing
and so to speak practically the unique close adviser of the tsar, finally the
most influential, and there often went to see gypsy concerts, is one of the
first personalities attached towards this period to the peace, even if we
impute to him it is true the catastrophic collapse of the tzarisme. In fact it
is the tzarina who remained attached to him, and the tsar also, it is him who
protected them and concentrated all the worldly powers of Saint-Pétersburg.

 

 Rasputine was murdered all the same while he prayed in front of a crucifix, by Youssoupof I believe, what
will be the prelude of the Bolshevik revolution. The butler of the baroness was
not far from the scene of the crime this day there.

After him and what we know that happened Gypsies under quite a lot of regimes, it
will be necessary to wait for artists of variety as Manitas de Plata, or forthe
immense, extraordinary and indescribable Chano Lobato, to attend an ascendancy
without sharing, at least a resurgence of the gypsies. I want to say a minimum
level of popularization there.

Chano Lobato is a monument, an immense artist, to the colossal talent. It is really
the real superstar of the purest flamenco who is, as El Camaron and so many
others. I had seen him to the Cirque d'Hiver long ago, in 83 seem you it. I did
not recognize him on the other hand on Web, on clip. El Pele is another big
artist, not of " jaleos " as Chano Lobato, but " tonas ". I
saw him in Paris also, with Vicente Amigo. There is also a masterly modern
artist, Bernardo Sandoval.

 Rasputine, who liked very much dancing, for example with Polish, is the first one to have taken under its cup as much the
imperial family as the Gypsies, even if everything failed. There was no other
example it is necessary to say it. Rasputine played even with the children of
the tsar. The tsar was very attached to him, he will have few servicemen for
Nicolas Svidine to his service. Poniatowki, the former mayor of the Island
Adam, was Polish or white Russian I believe. There are many white Russians who
came in France. The exhibition dedicated to Lartigue is low there it seems to
me. His boards are very beautiful and his successful photos.

Rasputin was the bolt which did not have to jump even if he made it only for the head
and managed his life as he wanted it in a way rather loose it is true.

There is another important castle either Mrs baroness had friends in Ile-de-France or
many personalities of foregrounds went and met. She also had relations, which
went seems to me you it until Maurice Couve de Murville or Louis De Broglie.
One need say no more.

And a woman of her family had married noble German, local country squire, just man in
quoted by the village who live Dieter and Gerda, my aunt. My mother saw her on
a picture, during an exhibition. It is to say as it's a small world, and as the
nobility extended everywhere in Europe.

What characterizes on the other hand Manuel Diez
Matilla, except his indifference for the power, it is all the same its
listening of the cultural and political problems, just as much as his seriousness
and its big rigor. He is not all the same outside his time, but on the contrary
implied body and soul in the great pictorial revolution which he knew how to
bring. There is all the artistic contrast.

It is really the painter who was interested in the
colors and in the color, in the cleanliness of the use of colors, with
decorations so stunning as surprising. I saw him making fabulous, unreal
decorations.

It is what strengthened him all the life. Because in
the world who we live the competition is rough. If you have some crenels
which help you to pass above the others you are done.

It is as me today in air conditioning and in plumbing. I am so to speak a designer
P3-P4, an account manager and a coder.

Once I had paid places for Manitas de Plata's concert in Villiers-le-Bel. I had
invited my brothers and the employees also. Pédro Perez is the employee who
remained longer with my father, it is him who sanded mostly, with Ramon, so dry
as in the cold water. The last knocks of pounce bag, it was often him.

 

 He came on holidays to Deauville with us sometimes when we had to deliver there low. Always spent time
us by the sea. Other friends came with us to Biarritz also. He withdrew in the
South, who he created his small company of decoration, in the polyester.

If my father was an immense artist, he was unfortunately a very bad administrator.
The employees had to take up the trash can at the top of the way of Condos.

Sometimes they did not hesitate to spirit away jars of lacquer which they slid in this
one.

They also stole him to the workshop, but globally my father was a proud and united
boss of his employees, even if they showed him all the colors.

As said it my aunt Maruja, or at least suggested it, and she’s too a very big artist,
this job is particularly hard.

The tours are tiring, even if sometimes they are triumphant. In this job if the
public is with you everything goes well. Once she made a big tour in Spain, who
a symphony of Beethoven was played every stage.

She said, and I agree with her, because the Hispanic directory is immense, that
Beethoven was a murderer of the music. The 9th moreover passed at the Stade de
France.

It's true, there is something very cold at Beethoven, in break with the traditional
background sounds. There is even doubtless certain refusal of the modernity or
lack of fervour from time to time. He has as put the music in a hermetic box.

I would say that he compressed the sonata, that he revolutionized 400 times

Karajan took no women, or rarely in his orchestra. I prefer him almost Otto Klemperer
and some others. Mozart is soft and strong to him, removed. It is an immense
genius also.

Hanifia adores Mozart, she listens to him indefatigably. We listen to his
concertos for keyboard in the car a lot.

This job, the popularization of which we insure by the communication, finally as we
can, because everything takes place by word of mouth requires a profound
respect for the public and the customers.

When one sale a piece of furniture or a table or other thing in a major customer,
often he invites his close relations or his friends, and they too see decorations,
what that is exactly.

Later they want to order a piece of furniture also, but different on the points of
their choice.

It is necessary to try to be a diplomat and to act tactfully and forecast, to make
play the feminine jealousy for example. But you should never abandon the
customer as long as we did not end it with him. Somebody who buys at your home
has to be a sacred person, it is the rule.

It is like that in all the circles, the customer is a king. If he retracts you sink
and your employees with you. It belongs to you to prevent him from it and to
propose him and ask him for what he wants. Love of the public is essential in
this job.

 

 Manuel Diez was the man of a profound transformation, an intense pictorial and
psychological reflection, even if some people do not like figurative arts as
they say.

Very modern artists admired him, because the freedom is for this price.

She demands a fundamental work.

Ethos, pathos, logos. Or still peculiarity, personality, then sensibility and finally
logic. The work of Manuel Diez Matilla handles always very indirectly the
various subjects approached on these bases, with a very particular esthetics.

René Descartes, in the passions of the soul, already
handles also muddled movements. It is the last work of Descartes published in
his lifetime. She is the object of a first attempt of psychophysiological
explanation of the mechanism of the passions.

Except Manuel Diez is the artist of the passion.

On photos following page which follow we see him in
the role of prompter to the theater. When he was young he went on the stage.
One of the plays was very funny and all the actors were dressed in vegetables.
Each had a special costume and was a citrus fruit.

He played in other plays, as young man.

 

 

 

 

Youth photo.