Manuel Diez Matilla: a forgotten fate

Psychoanalysis of the work of Manuel Diez
Matilla

8th part

Revision in Sunday, August 18th, 2013

By Christian Diez Axnick

 Above an old memory, our house at the beginning of the 60s.

Below our poster in the big period. 

I have to say it, when my aunt had come from Spain with her niece, it had a little
given to me the homesickness. Spanish is a language so poetic, so melodious, in
the prose so imaginative and surprising. I like this tongue, which sings less
that Italian, but allows so many subtleties and sharpness in a discussion.

Spanish is the language of the pleasant and the refinement, the typically Spanish humor.

The phlegmatic humor of this tongue, calms down, plain of joke, is for me something of which I cannot take place.

France is a country globally richer than Spain,inclusive Catalonia. Only in Ile-de-France, every region possesses practically
at least hundred castles with parks and gardens. That of Chamarande, in the Essonne, has a gigantic, breathtaking park.

National archives are there, as to Pierrefitte (I worked on it at BETOM for the air conditioning). More than 20 000 workers died
on the other hand during the construction of the Palace of Versailles, in particular because of swamps and of malaria.

A whole world collapsed with Manuel Diez's death, that also last illusions of an a little more just, a little less sectarian world. It was
really a big genius, today his paintings went almost everywhere, the family, the friends, some food sales.

I do not want to be square, but I find that painters of his dimension and its
stature are lacking already in our time unstitched, who we try to launch some modern artists so-so.

I glimpsed the exhibition on the Swiss painter Paul Klee for example, or rather overflew.
Gérard Garouste was on television several times, being considered as the
biggest contemporary French painter. But I do not find the concern of the
detail and the intrusive passion of the perfection who possessed my father, the
hand which he had. A documentary was dedicated to Garouste who also painted in earth-saint.

 He and Jeumont are charming people, with whom my father worked all the same about twenty years and for whom he realized
hundreds of tables and furniture. But to go to the front difficulties, I would say that the world of the art stagnates today, not to say that it finds itself
in the impasse who we were kind enough to throw him.

Parts were inequitably distributed since the beginning. I mean there that we shall
not redo any more an artist as my father. And then, France is a jealous country
of its privileges, exploiter. It is there harder and harder to work, to find
the inspiration there which is our fiber to all.

 This inspiration, it sometimes came to miss him, but it always eventually resurfaced unexpectedly. My father
worked with all the head. It was an intelligent, very cunning and very resourceful painter.

He had this innate sense of the painting, this voracious passion, this faculty to solve the biggest difficulties, these exceptional bright
flashes of lightning. He had the class and the talent gathered.

All his life took place and scrolled the paintings which he composed

 Honestly, I have nothing of that kind, qualities which he had, even if I took many notes of what he explained me and
learnt me. He supported me always, always always managed, taught his thousand one tricks and other small things.

His talent was insane. I was amazed by what I saw, amazed, he was bluffing, often completely amazing.

When I think of him, I have the impression to be a dwarf in esteemed by him.

Somewhere, I am almost ashamed of me, but I saw revised the wonderful moments when we sometimes spent,
I see again in dream the tireless worker that it was. I always followed him as I was able to, of my best.

 Yes, he could sometimes have a little of contempt for such or such, or not like such or such other one, look
up and measure the biggest, such a genius could him allow itself. That's saying something.

 I saw at work him during years. He crushed me as vulgar one louse of all his class.

I would almost dare to say that I looked like an idiot in front of such a monster of the painting,

so much for the oil, as for the cellulosic, the watercolor or the pastel.

My foundations were exploded by so much control and know-how.

 I found myself little in an a little bit solo parallel career, so much I did not make the weight.

 About some appreciated my work, him even sometimes.

He lavished me all his encouragements, he helped me a lot.

 Stemming from a prosaic world on the point to disappear, an exceptional world which we shall not find
any more, Manuel Diez was also somewhere the product of this world, one of his last representatives.

We have a common point, it is that he set notes in the pencil in his workshop a lot
which left place today with an extension of the house. I too on my workplace,
generally take notes. Can these few lines help, councillor and inspire the
talents to come, the young people who arrive.

I remember a delivery to Deauville. He had absolutely wanted that Katia Granof
dedicates her book " of Spain " in Honfleur. He dedicated a real passion to the contemporary writers.

He liked very much reading. He liked very much Jean D'Ormesson for example, or Michèle Morgan as I said it somewhere else
in my studies. She also has a gallery in Paris, on the Champs-Elysées Ibelieve.

I passed by Honfleur with Hanifia after a stay to Fécamp. Her gallery always
exists. Good artists always expose in Honfleur. The walk throughout galleries
is soft and pleasant. Honfleur is a small marvel leaned in the sea, and count
even a small beach. The lights of Fécamp are very attractive at night
also.

On the photo which follows, previous in the time, we see him to Jasper, the dog which
he probably most liked. He came with us too to Deauville, as Viking, the German
shepherd, we had several of this name there. Jasper had bitten Guy, of the décor
du logis, when he had come. He was not an easy one. But he was very
affectionate with my father.

We perceive the old table of the workshop, on which he so much worked, and the bric-a-brac
at the bottom.


On this photo, David is lower left, and I sat on my lengthened father.