The island of Lanzarote has become one of the favourite tourism
destinations in the Canary Islands over the last few decades. However,
our interest is more one of artistic than of touristic discovery,
and this would be virtually unthinkable without the work of an artist
who fell in love with this wonderful paradise. We refer to César
Manrique (1919-1992), who was able to see and reveal to us the
unique beauties arising out of the happy marriage of the four elements
believed by the Greeks to form the whole of creation: air,
earth, fire and water.
In fact, after returning to his island in 1968 after a period spent
in New York, Manrique dedicated himself passionately to realizing
his utopia, to renew Lanzarote out of his own sources. Among
Manriques best known works on Lanzarote are the Casa Museo
del Campesino, the Jameos del Agua, the Mirador del Río, the
Cactus Garden and his own house in the Taro de Tahíche.
Manrique's house in Taro de Tahíche, which nowadays houses
the César Manrique Foundation, can be considered as a »work in
progress« as it was built over a period of almost 25 years and was
still not completed upon the artist's death. Arising out of the five interconnected
volcanic bubbles of the underground storey, it has
become a metaphor for the amorous meeting of man with Mother
Earth, this latter being understood, to use Bruno Taut's expression,
as »a fine home for living«. The spaces on the upper floor can be
virtually mistaken for the white cubic buildings dispersed throughout
the island. But when we cross their thresholds, we have the
unique feeling that here something was created which is really new.
In fact, Manrique - enemy in equal measure of the »pastiche« of
regionalism and the off-key International Style blind to differentiation
- sifted the vernacular with certain modern filters such as
Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier, and at
the same time gave it such a specific stamp that the final result
became indigenous and unmistakeable.
Simón Marchán Fiz is professor of aesthetics in Madrid. Like
Marchán Fiz Pedro Martinez de Albornoz lives in Madrid. The photographs
shown in this book are the best photographic interpretation
of one of Manrique's work up to now.