Manuel Diez Matilla: a forgotten fate

 

 

Psychoanalysis of the work of Manuel Diez Matilla

 

4th part

Revision in Saturday, December 8th, 2012

By Christian Diez Axnick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 You went out and you left.

If it is a work which I recommend to the lover of Montmartre, it is the " Guide of Montmartre "

(Guides Horay), who lingers to describe with an extreme accuracy all the streets and them legendary
tenants, all the prestigious places, the addresses of the impressionists,
without counting the test card of the North, in 3 street Girardon, way of both brothers.

When I went to the concert of Maurane " O Nougaro ", she entrusted to the public that Claude Nougaro

and Diane Dufresne lived in Montmartre, who she also occurred.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above a piece of furniture realized by my father to the studio in the 70s.

Rigor and sobriety of tones leathers characterize the work.

 

 

 

 

The painting of Dali, memories of Africa testifies she of the mysticism of the
artist, and beyond the modern currents of time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It is on the other hand a single man, in front of himself and of his fate, on the picture of bottom that
we find.





The contrast is striking, he testifies many of the reality. Below the famous carpet
of the creation in Girona. A unique part. My father did not see him. I shall
risk however a parallel in the field of the ideas strengths.

 

 

 

 

 

 Indeed, if it is a reality difficult to clarify with a painter as Manuel Diez Matilla, it is to know how
he was able to shine on the painting during decades, to breathe such a spirit,
before dying in the forgetting and of horrible conditions of the end of life.
His Calvary lasted two years, and nobody had the courage to abbreviate him.



Yes, you should not forget it in spite of the well roamed propaganda systems which
exist, my father came from a labor and modest middle, he was always modest.
Toro of my childhood, and at a much lesser level Castile, Basque Country and
Madrid, are at the time of the rather miserable regions. The poverty is still
everywhere. The language, the Basque, and beyond the alive Indo-European
civilization in the Basque world, is a big language, very interesting.

 Toro is one of main cradles of the Christendom in Europe, but also and especially

a popular bastion, a place or the expression of the people, its tendencies, its tastes,

its traditions, are something which still remained very strong.

The link with the Middle Ages, with the golden century, the style plateresque,

with the Moresque origins, the popular cheeky humour, the implanting of this magic place of the Christianity,

all this conditioned the mental structures of the artist.

 

 The " Toresanos " are people of a certain taste, a certain lifestyle. Honestly, when my father
started in the painting while he was hardly 4 years old and made soldiers with
the clay of Téjar at about 8 years, balls, he often asked for the opinion of my
grandfather or my grandmother, he was too small to suspect his talent, and
tried to see, to know of what the others thought of his painting. Once bigger,
he continued to ask them for their opinion, and also for that of her sister
with whom he always remained very close, my aunt Angelita.

At that time, the freedom of today, the contempt shown for the conventions,

all this was absent in the Christian morality, it did not exist, purely and simply.

 People were and lived happy, the idea of hatred as nowadays did not exist.

Only the civil war upset an important part of the spirits and the behavior.

But this labor, deconsecrated world and in the lifestyle so peaceful, lively,

in the powerful strengths, lived in a very old frame framed partially by the church

who my father had to draw inevitably his inspiration.

To tell the truth, it is the power of his genius which had to lead him little by little
to bigger projects, of which that to emigrate to France once its taken
decision. It is thus necessary to consider the frame of the birth of its work.
And also his faculty to change abruptly of direction.

His departure in France corresponds to an abrupt change and sudden. He had to send
a little money to his parents, as the major part of the immigrants. As he
always said it, he came in France to work, what many people did not still
understand here.

The Spanish people are people of an immense taste, and my father synthesized well
this prodigious experience, which he stopped making fruit. I have to say it here,
being of a rather low physical constitution, his physical vigour was enormous,
which contrasts with its end of life who he was not more than a vegetable of
some kilos. In France, the doctor had entrusted him that he had never seen
lungs as his. It is
to say if he was strong, and worked hard. A sacred dose of physical strength is
needed to paint and work with brushes and paint as he always made him. He also
had a good eye, the intelligence of accomplished master.

 

 

As everywhere and always, shadows and lights live in us. Manuel Diez is really the
painter who knew how to give a direction, clear the real solutions of future.
His pictorial adventure begins on the banks of Duero, along castles and
landscapes of Castile, and ends in Paris, by way of a large part of Europe,
Sologne and the Basque Country in particular.

Many of his works scattered. And then he made so many furniture, tables for the décor
du logis, Mrs Mush, Mrs Weintraub, the big trianon in Versailles, the little
trianon also I believe, so many other customers, Biarritz, Deauville, Tours.
His gigantic work is fragmented almost everywhere in the world today, it
scattered through all the family and the friends, the buyers.