BREVE RECORRIDO POR SALAS
1
Laxeiro lived in Cuba from 1921 to 1925. During his stay in La Habana he saw exhibitions by Ignacio Zuloaga and Jesús Corredoyra. Laxeiro was still a child, but he retained some images and ideas. Years later, when he had become a fully-fledged painter, he remarked: “These exhibitions made everything that I carry inside me as a painter shudder to the core”. Whether or not the memory is actually literal, it points to Zuloaga and Corredoira not as companions but as a starting point for a way of painting that was conscious of what had already been achieved. Fully developed painters seen by the novice, he is surprised by them and makes his first selections; dense painters, of flesh, of colour and shadows.
2
Self-portraits and iconography. The self-portraits often reveal the painter’s desires: some, being young, portray themselves older, perhaps affirming the condition they seek to achieve. Laxeiro portrays himself faithfully in his time and in the language of his painting. He quickly defined his favourite iconographic themes, to which he returned at different times: life, painting, carnival, children, musicians, family scenes, condensed real or fictional popular stories, portraits, gesture painting, the stain, the colour... Images in consummate compositions, with a touch of theatrics, a scene playing out before our eyes.
3
The 1930s placed him in contact with similar painters, with concerns akin to his own. In this period his models, ways of painting, iconographies and ideology became fixed. The painting as a mandorla and the cloud as a composition, all supported by the lines of the drawing. The relationship between the figures, and between them and the landscape or architecture: with allusions to the rural and to Romanesque sculpture. To paint Galicia, to define a new Galician art and to become artistically and politically committed. To explore tradition with the aim of moving towards new proposals. To deal with familiar themes and their common bond, Galicia and its values, in an attempt to depict them in a new, less costumbrista or local way, thanks to the language of painting.
4
The way a painting is built, the choice of materials. In Laxeiro there is a debate between figuration (the need to paint in layers, shading) and free gesture (his facility as a draftsman, making swift brushstrokes). His breakthrough comes when he discovers that the key is the composition, the inner structure of the painting, something that he intuited when he started drawing them. Agile and quick to see, he turns his attention to the Romanesque, to the Galician landscape (the mountains), and presents a personal approach including variegated compositions, adaptation to the frame and images supported and justified by their relationships. In his painting, figures possess weight and are anchored to the earth, like sculptures hewn from density.
5
In contrast to the image of Laxeiro as a happy character, a painter of the everyday, of the familiar, his painting is actually dense and dramatic, like a popular feast day. The popular is joy and celebration, but also drama, pain: a bond that is experienced strongly in the rural world, in sayings and proverbs, in religion, in symbols, in games, in tales and fables, in literature and in that oral language which fuelled Laxeiro’s art. As in the books by some of his friends who were great novelists, scenes, scales, actions and stories coexist in Laxeiro's paintings, but all are governed by an apparent order. And within the painting everything is happening.
6
Every artist has his “chosen affinities”. Laxeiro admits to being joyful when he sees or coincides with Gutiérrez Solana, Vázquez Díaz or Benjamín Palencia, artists we feel are closer to each other for defending the independence of their proposals: in appearance closer to Solana's way of painting, while Vázquez Díaz exhibits compositions that embrace an almost warm, landscape cubism, and Palencia possesses a palette of alternative landscapes. Likewise, his encounters, such as his way of structuring a Torres García painting and pairing it with a Maruja Mallo organic painting, which lets us understand the contemporary nature of the paintings that Laxeiro tenders as altarpieces or stained glass windows.
7
Rembrandt and Goya are two constant references for Laxeiro. Rembrandt and the density of paint, a predilection for matter and nuance: a painting of layers upon layers, of flesh and appearances. Goya's approach was to paint everyday scenes to which he added sentences, dwelling on what the image says and insinuates. The pleasure of seeing the painting appear, the interest in expressing an opinion via painting. And hand in hand with the painter who searches and explores, is the agile, fast and accurate draftsman, which links to Castelao and Seoane.
8
From 1950 to 1971, Laxeiro lived in Buenos Aires and his painting became freer in gesture, but denser and more expressive, to the point of conversing naturally with European informalist approaches. Laxeiro’s heads, in contrast to Saura’s use of size, Canogar's fondness for cracks and screams, or even to his own tribute to Rembrandt’s portraits, lay bare his devotions (as is the case of Seoane in his famous folder of etchings). It is difficult to imagine a group that better indicates an era and the individual character of Laxeiro's art.
9
Faced with the regional coercion of condemning an artist to a place, to a geography, he dares to analyse that with his art. Why not see Laxeiro as an oddball in the style of Derain? A painter who paints what he wants, who returns to his themes and escapes to difficult places. When looking at Picasso, Laxeiro is capable of uniting the drama of Guernica with the sensuality of his most classical figures; which would stand happily among the late works by De Chirico or Picabia. Once an official history of Galician art has been established, which being official does not inure it from a hint of Borgesian infamy, why not look at the works directly and pay attention to the stuff that is forever in the margins?
10
What if we looked for order in Laxeiro when at his most free and colourful? When Laxeiro is conscious of his skill, of his prowess, and paints “as easy as pie”, like someone simply walking, talking or drawing. Other comparable artists rely on the strength of colour, or on composition, or even on certain manual, gentle geometries, such as collage. Laxeiro being the “old painter” (Titian, Matisse), trapped by painting, turned into painting. For years he strove to compose finished works, which were often helped by the thick lines of a preparatory drawing, and in his maturity he is aware that he even paints in the air, which is painting.
11
If painting were a linear path, judging it would be easier. Fortunately it is not, and reviewing it according to the criteria of each era is quite appealing. Laxeiro is the author of irrefutable paintings, regardless of their time, size and workmanship, and a flurry of drawings and paintings that guarantee him the echo of familiarity. When exhibited, we can see how the painter seeks to define a painting and adjust a composition; in his maturity, however, he is capable of deconstructing the image without harming the painting, perhaps unconsciously, to continue investigating. There are Grosz’s crowds, Paolo Uccello’s battles, Ensor’s vanishings – and Laxeiro’s laxeiros.
