I used to go hunting in the woods. Today I scare the blackbirds that eat the blackberries in my garden with an air rifle'. Self-portrait of Juan Cárdenas

 

He does not know if he was born in Bogotá or Popayán “because in 1939 he was very young” and does not remember. He was a friend of Luis Caballero, Carlos Rojas and Feliza Bursztyn; his brother is also an artist. And he is also one of the greats. He lived in the United States during his childhood and youth and learned Spanish with La Vorágine. He is married to the artist Monica Meira. He was imprisoned for talking about cocaine trafficking in a cartoon with the national coat of arms. He is one of the great Colombian painters of all time and perhaps one of the least visible. This is his self-portrait.

 

Juan Cardenas' house is full of unfinished paintings. They lack a small detail, one more brushstroke, a face to be defined. Things that only his eyes can detect, of course. For visitors they are difficult to discover. They are on the walls of the living room, in the dining room, in the corridors and, of course, in his two workshops. In the one he opens to visitors without any problem -this Monday morning there are two intrusive journalists- and in that workshop where he paints every day, where he has the works that are just coming out of his head, the mirrors, the freshest brushes, and where he does not like anyone else to enter. Juan Cárdenas Arroyo is one of the fundamental painters in the history of Colombian art and, without fear of exaggeration, one of those who have been the least interviewed or reported on. His thing has always been to stay behind closed doors. His thing has been to remain days, weeks, months, even years, in front of the same painting, defining each line, specifying each color, until it is finished.

 

When he was four or five years old -in the Popayán where his family has its roots going back centuries-, Juan Cárdenas already sat on the floor of his house, surrounded by papers and colored boxes, to draw. There were no voices telling him to do something else. At home, art flew without a problem. His father, Jorge Cárdenas Nannetti, writer, economist, editor, founder of press agencies, was a man of letters who also had a talent for drawing. His mother, Margarita Arroyo Arboleda, a furious lover of reading, was also vital in nurturing the vocation that began to emerge in Juan. The same for his eldest son, Santiago, another key figure in Colombian art. The Cárdenas family came from the cradle.

 

He was not yet ten years old when -with his family- he went to live in New York. In the midst of the post-war period, Juan Cárdenas found a new country full of euphoria. Everything seemed to have a splendor that for the newly arrived child was striking. He studied his first years at the Colonial School, a public school in Pelham. One day, his father took him and his brother to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. So many masterpieces. So many images to discover. It was a moment of epiphany. Because, upon leaving, Juan had the conviction to dedicate his life to painting. And so he has.

 

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Cardenas returned to Colombia in the late 1960s. It was a return visit, but he decided to stay. As his career as a painter took hold, he sought other parallel activities that would allow him to “make a living”. He made political cartoons that he published in national print media. Some of them got him into trouble with the government of the day. So much so that he ended up spending several days detained in a dungeon. Even there, behind bars, Cardenas did not stop painting. He also worked as a professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Andes, then headed by Juan Antonio Roda. It was not long before his presence was felt: he took his students to the morgue to study anatomy in the process of dissecting corpses. The method failed: his students fell, in line, fainting.

 

His work began to be shown in exhibitions -in 1973 he had his first solo exhibition at the Bogota Museum of Art-, his paintings began to receive awards -in 1974, a self-portrait of him won the National Painting Prize at the National Artists' Salon-. Gradually, however, Cardenas' career began to develop more inward. Since then, he has debated alone, with his own angels and demons, in his studio. Heed the call of his subconscious -as he himself has explained- and take it to the canvas without responding to any other fidelity than his ideas. Juan Cárdenas has never been moved by fashions, trends, or the apocalyptic voices that have shouted that painting's days are numbered. His work does not respond to external mandates.

 

A self-portrait or the reconstruction of a historical moment. The nooks and crannies of his own workshop or a rural landscape. Figurative or abstract paintings. In the workshop he shows us is the sketch of the portrait he made of García Márquez in New York at his request, but he decided that Gabo should not be alone and also painted Mercedes Barcha -because he was a friend of both of them- with long orange hair like that of the protagonist of Del amor y otros demonios. In the living room and dining room there are, in addition to several works by his wife, a painting of Manuelita Sáenz and several paintings of the Independence, with scenes of a Bogota and a country that he has reconstructed from historical chronicles of authors such as José María Cordovez Moure and Pedro María Ibáñez. His work - also populated by monsters, mythological characters and architectural spaces - travels through everything without anything being alien to him. His paintings have challenged him -when creating them- and challenge the viewer when observing them. Because they expose complexities, obsessions, searches. As Cardenas himself writes in the catalog of his recent exhibition, 'Paintings and Drawings', at La Cometa gallery, his territory is “the strange phenomenon of life and existence”. “And I think the artist should be able to say: 'I was lucky enough to taste existence, and in that short span, this is what I saw'.” True to his temperament, reserved, elusive to cameras and recordings, Juan Cardenas asked to answer the questions of this interview in writing. These are his answers.

 

Some biographical texts read: 'Juan Cárdenas, Bogotá, 1939'. In others: 'Juan Cárdenas, Popayán, 1939'. He was born “by chance” in Bogota, but he feels totally Popayanejo.

 

How do you remember your childhood in Popayán?

 

They tell me I was born in 1939 (but I was very young and didn't realize it). I spent several years of my childhood in Popayán and the memory I have of it is that of a sleepy world in the 19th century, where only poets, historians, politicians, intellectuals and presidents were produced. Despite their great culture, the intellectuals of that time did not know Mendeleev's table of the elements and swore that only Aristotle's four elements, earth, air, water and fire, existed. But they were a good, healthy, cultured and charming people. My father told how he and his brothers went to school wearing leather shoes, but they took them off and left them at the door before entering, so as not to humiliate the poor children who went barefoot. The treatment between the different social strata was friendly, polite and respectful. There was no hatred and aggressiveness that over the years was eating away at the social fabric. Our mother's house was an immense two-story building that dated back to the colony and the family rented one of the several interior patios for bullfights. It was a world that I was able to savor a little before it disappeared forever.

 

How hard was it for you to leave your world in Colombia - school, friends, environment, nature - and adapt to a new life in the United States?

The family left Colombia in 1947 for New York, two years after the end of World War II. I was seven years old. For a long time I dreamed and longed for the farms of Cauca, its haciendas, its horses and cattle. My father had given my brother Santiago and me a black filly that I could never enjoy and that I missed for a long time until the memory of her faded and I was adapting to a country that seemed gray and dreary where they spoke another language. But when you are young you get used to anything and I quickly got used to American life.

 

What was that country like when you arrived, what made the biggest impact on you?

In those years the United States became the most powerful nation in the world. It had won the world war and its economy was booming. Factories, which had been dedicated to producing tanks, ships and war planes, were beginning to produce cars, refrigerators and televisions, as well as a myriad of goods that people welcomed with open arms. It was an economic boom that brought unparalleled prosperity. Those were years of euphoria and well-being, but I didn't realize it until much later. At that time it seemed normal to me. Franklin Roosevelt had died and President Truman had replaced him. American popular culture had exploded, rock and roll, jazz, singers like Bing Crosby. The Hollywood film industry conquered the world and in the visual arts, abstract expressionism prevailed even in Paris. The classical music heard on radio and television was disappearing year after year and was replaced by a populist culture. In those years an unbridled commercialism emerged that eventually gave rise to the concept of pop art. Your father took you to the Metropolitan Museum in New York when you were a child, and that visit was fundamental to your decision to become a painter.

 

How do you remember that visit? What works had the greatest impact on you at that time?

 

When my brother and I were about eleven years old, my father took us to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in order to “disassociate us” (those were his words) and introduce us to art and human history. I didn't know museums existed, I had never seen one, much less an encyclopedic museum like the Metropolitan. That experience was absolutely transcendental for me! There were Egyptian mummies, Greek urns, Roman sculptures, Inca textiles and even entire bedrooms of 19th century European royalty. But it was the European paintings that moved me the most. They were fascinating worlds that each painter had created on canvas; images that the the theories of the past, the worlds of the past, that spoke of ancient empires, exceptional lives and events, dreamlike places, in short, it was the history of humanity and its thoughts miraculously preserved forever in the pictorial space of a canvas as if they were insects preserved in amber. Those paintings shook me deeply and when I left the museum and went down those majestic stairs of that beautiful building, I made the decision to become a painter.

 

But there was a time when, for you, the caricatures your father painted were better than Velazquez's paintings. What is the story of the time when you would sneak into your father's library and gossip among his drawings?

My older brother, Santiago, and I were still children when we would sneak into my father's library to snoop through his books in the hope of finding some funny pictures, and we discovered a book by Diego Velázquez. Near it was a sketchbook with the comic strips of a certain Gato Tiburcio drawn by my father. He had created them in order to complement a newspaper news service that he and his brother, Eduardo, sold to Latin American newspapers in a company he created (Editor's Press Service). Comic strips were all the rage and the newspapers of the time were looking for them to liven up and sell their product. It seemed impossible to Santiago and me that human hands could have captured such marvels as the paintings of Velázquez and Gato Tiburcio and with deep admiration we debated which of the two was better. In the end, Tiburcio the Cat won, but not by much! We did all this quietly because Velazquez's book had nudity in it. Years later, when I entered the university to study Fine Arts, Velázquez won the advantage over Gato and since then that advantage has been increasing.

 

Before we get to your college days, let's talk about something else. You write with both hands and you do it, moreover, in the opposite direction. Your teachers at school scolded you for that. How did you start writing that way? Has it given you any advantage when it comes to painting?

I spent these years studying in excellent schools, which I still remember with admiration and respect, where I studied primary and secondary school. At that time I used to write with both hands simultaneously; with the right hand to the right and with the left hand to the left. I did this since I was a child in Colombia, in order to speed up repetitive tasks. I always thought it was a normal thing to do. I remember my teachers scolding me because it was wrong. Later I realized that I most likely had a short circuit in my brain. But to this day I still use both hands indistinctly to draw, paint, write and whatever else comes my way. I have never felt that it has harmed me.

In those times of school I was a sportsman, among others I practiced pole vault and long jump. Did sports continue to be important in your life?

Both Santiago and I were sportsmen in our youth. He excelled in long-distance running and always won medals. I was a pole vaulter, but I never excelled or won medals. Until, at the point where I suffered painful beatings, and tired of them, I changed sports. I opted for carbine shooting. I used to go hunting in the woods, a sport I still practice today, scaring away the blackbirds that eat the blackberries in my garden, with a compressed air carbine, although sometimes I use a rubber gun.

 

At any time did you think of taking a professional path other than art?

As an impetuous and energetic young man, I toyed with the idea of applying to the military academy at West Point, but was unsuccessful because I was not an American citizen. However, the fascination with art consumed me and I drew continuously in my youth. I went back to the Metropolitan Museum every now and then. From then on, I never stopped visiting the Metropolitan every year, as well as the Prado, the Louvre, the National Gallery in London and Washington, the Rijksmuseum, the Uffizi, the Musée d'Orsay, among many others.

 

You studied at Rhode Island School of Design. In perspective, what was the most important thing for you about your education there?

When it came time to decide what career I wanted to pursue, without the slightest hesitation I chose Fine Arts. I applied to the Rhode Island School of Design and was accepted. I studied there for four years and graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. This university was considered the best in the United States to study the arts and offered exchange courses with Brown University, which was a few blocks away. Interestingly, at that time they required the art student to take physics courses, and offered electives such as philosophy, music and psychology. Today I doubt they require physics from an art student at a university. Those were different times and I'm glad I took courses in physics, philosophy and classical music. It is so important for an artist of our times to have a broad, humanistic cultural formation that allows him to understand the phenomenon of human creativity and thus be able to evaluate what is truly meritorious and what is not.

You also did military service in the U.S. Is it true that you almost had to go to Vietnam? What was that experience like?

When I finished college I served for two years in the U.S. Army, in the 101st Parachute Division. Not as a paratrooper, but as a combat engineer. My job was to build bridges, bulwarks, parapets and roads for the army coming up behind me. I was spared from being sent to Vietnam for two weeks upon completion of my tour of duty. However, the military experience was extremely interesting and useful because it builds a young man's character and prepares him to face danger if he is ever forced to defend democracy. Life is not always rosy. 

 

What led you to return to Colombia? What was Bogota like at the time it received you? 

At the end of '65, I embarked in New York Bay to return to my homeland. I practically didn't know it, I had left very young. I returned by boat with great enthusiasm and the illusion of going up the Magdalena River in a 19th century steamship, surrounded by crocodiles, mangroves and outrageous monkeys on both sides of the river. What a disappointment! All that was gone and I had to content myself with boarding a plane to Bogotá. But I found a charming city and country and I stayed. It was another Bogota. Hundredth Street did not exist. From there to the north it was all pastures. Jiménez Avenue, where I often went to perfect my Spanish among gangsters and street vendors, was fascinating because of the characters that inhabited it. There was an abundance of madmen, semi-madmen and those who were on the road to insanity.

An anecdote in the midst of your return to the country: is it true that your father gave you an edition of La vorágine to train your Spanish?

I spoke Spanish badly and, being still in the military, I asked my father to send me a book in Spanish to improve that deficiency.

 

He sent me La vorágine, by José Eustasio Rivera. In my free time, I would go to the battalion library and with the help of a dictionary, and underlining word by word, I improved my vocabulary, which at that time was that of a beginner. My first language was English.  

 

Already here in Bogota he began to work in different printed media, as a cartoonist. One of the first ones you published got you in trouble with the government in power. How did that story go?

To make a living, I started working as a political cartoonist in La República, EL TIEMPO, El Espacio, which in those years was just beginning its existence, and Flash magazine. I think it was the second cartoon I published that annoyed the president and eventually I ended up in the dungeons of the DAS. It was a cartoon that showed the national coat of arms with the president as a condor and in his claws a ribbon that said “slanders that polish our reputations” (phrase of the president). The cornucopias were replaced by Volkswagen cars full of money in the trunks, which alluded to the car smuggling in which the Secretary of the Presidency was involved. Next came the Phrygian cap nailed to a stake with a tie around his neck and below, in the isthmus of Panama, two ships smuggling cocaine, which at that time began in Colombia.

 

Didn't the fact of ending up in the dungeons take away your desire to continue publishing cartoons?

The seventy-two hours I spent detained in the DAS were not enough to intimidate my enthusiasm for cartooning. I continued to practice the profession for several more years and to this day I continue to draw caricatures, which I do not publish, but with which I burst into laughter in the intimacy of my studio. Caricature was so badly paid that, with great sadness, I had to abandon it as a livelihood. What they paid me was barely enough to buy a bag of potato chips in San Victorino, which was my lunch. Then, to survive I dedicated myself to studying animated film on my own. I got a manual moviola on which I studied, frame by frame, Walt Disney's films, copying the movements of each character in a sketchbook until I learned how to animate a character. From then on, with the collaboration of an excellent filmmaker and photographer, Héctor Acebes, I managed to provide animated film service to the capital's advertising agencies, and my diet of French fries went up the ladder to a plate of beans for lunch.

You also arrived at the Universidad de los Andes, as a professor in its Arts faculty, called by Juan Antonio Roda. 

 

Did you enjoy being a professor in a subject as difficult to teach as art?

In those days, Juan Antonio Roda, director of the School of Fine Arts at the University of the Andes, proposed that I teach a course in anatomical drawing for artists of the faculty.

 

I accepted the offer. Teaching art is very difficult because you cannot present the student with material for him to learn and memorize, as you can do with science, mathematics, history or law. In art, it is about the individual commenting on his own experiences in a particularly interesting and exceptional way. I got permission to take my students to draw cadavers at the Universidad Javeriana. But the students fainted when they saw human organs floating in vats of formaldehyde. It was also very difficult to distinguish the different tissues of a cadaver because everything looked very similar in a lifeless body.

Did you meet your wife, the artist Monica Meira, in those classes?

My wife, Monica, was one of the few who did not faint. That caught my attention and I married her. But I was forced to give up teaching anatomical drawing with cadavers.

 

During those years, the presence of Marta Traba was decisive in the direction that Colombian art was taking. How did you get along with her? How do you consider the role you played?

Marta Traba was an intelligent and valuable person. She helped a lot to awaken artistic awareness in Colombia. But she believed too much in foreign artistic currents, which I consider harmful.

From the beginning of your career you decided, precisely, to be faithful to your own ideas. And the self-portrait has been fundamental in your work. What has been your search when working on your face?

Every work of art is, in a certain way, a self-portrait of the artist who created it, whether literary, musical or pictorial. But the self-portrait, as such, says a lot about the artist who painted it. For me, the self-portrait is much more than a recognizable image of the painter. It must go beyond the recognizable.

You have two workshops: one that functions as a showroom, another that you keep reserved for yourself. Why don't you like to show your workspace?

The workshop where I work is a very private and intimate place. I don't even tolerate models while I paint, and it is harmful and uncomfortable when a visitor comments on a work that is in progress. It makes me think of García Márquez's last novel, which his relatives published at a time when Gabriel would never have allowed it. Michelangelo Buonarroti said that he burned his bad drawings so that posterity would not judge him for them.

He once said that among his hobbies was restoring old instruments, such as violins. Do you still do this?

I have always had a fascination with classical music and with the construction of instruments. For several years I was obsessed with the construction of the violin and I dedicated myself to the restoration of old violins. It is incredible that with four sticks and a bit of horsehair you can get sounds as sublime as those produced by a great violinist like Pablo Sarasate. The acoustic mystery that lies behind the design of a great Cremona violin deserves all my respect.

This love of music has also led him to try himself as a guitarist...

I play classical guitar. I have been playing it every night since I was young, but I will never become a concert pianist. Years ago, when I was playing the violin, my children would shout at me: “No more, daddy, shut up, no more!”

What has your friendship with other artists been like? Do you become good friends in the art world?

Mónica and I had several Colombian artists as friends. Most of them have died, but we have fond memories of them. Carlos Rojas, for example, was born with an amazing aesthetic sensitivity. In his case it was a genetic gift; I would almost say that he never had to study art. Luis Caballero, besides being a great friend, was a very talented and cultured artist. He was one of the few who really knew about art. You could talk seriously about the subject with him. Feliza Bursztyn was also a good friend, very funny and very creative. Rafael Puyana, a harpsichordist, was one of our best friends. An erudite, refined, cultured man and a great musician. He contributed a lot to us. I have fond memories of him and I confess that he is greatly missed.

He has said that sometimes he feels more like an archaeologist than a painter, because of his interest in reconstructing the daily life of the past. Why are you so interested in history?

Historical painting, a genre that interests me greatly, was practically banned in the 19th century with the rise of modernism. Impressionism and post-impressionism dealt it the final blow. The ideology of the avant-garde prohibited it, and although the writer, the historian, the musician and even the politician have the right to touch on the subject, the painter does not. The painter does not have that freedom of expression because the theory of contemporary art prohibits it. But the painter can provide a great service to society as an archaeologist with visual art. The artist can recreate places and characters that no longer exist and allow us to see things that have disappeared, perhaps millions of years ago. He can comment on and preserve history.

 

But of course, that is not considered art today, as is the sealed can containing human feces that is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which they usually exhibit from time to time for the delight of art lovers.

You often return to the same work over and over again. You can even work on it for years. Are you interested in leaving evidence of the creative process in your paintings? Do you pursue perfection?

In my case, I work on the paintings over and over again. I erase, remove, paint, scrape, paint again. I never finish because the next day I see the flaws or I have new ideas. I recognize that I will never achieve perfection. What if I believed that? If perfection could be achieved in art, I doubt very much that I would achieve it.