The sculptor who did the Goya for 30 years however could not do the one his son gained | Culture | EUROtoday

It had been really useful to him. Let him take into consideration what he was going to say. Just in case. Have it written in a word. That that may be a black gap. That it could prove properly or you may block your self and be unable to say a phrase. He heeded the recommendation. He had a written piece of paper in a pocket of his jacket. He did not must take it out. Two of his issues weren’t realized both: he neither began crying nor gave him a hibiscus.

When the actress Irene Escolar opened the envelope and introduced her title because the winner in the very best modifying class, Cristóbal Fernández (45 years previous, Madrid) bought up from his seat and didn’t bear in mind the paper he was carrying in his jacket. Before going up I used to be very nervous. As quickly as he bought up from his seat, he stopped being so. He thanked Oliver Laxe – the director of Sirat, the movie he edited -, your complete workforce, the producers, his household, his mom, his father… and relating to the latter he added: “and today is his birthday, I congratulated him from here… in addition, he is the sculptor who has made the Goya awards for almost 30 years, so it is a very familiar award for everyone, very special…”. The viewers then started to applaud, denoting the tenderness generated by a son recognizing the work of a father.

As quickly as he completed his speech, cellphones and landlines started to ring within the Madrid condo the place the sculptor José Luis Fernández (83 years previous, Oviedo) lives, who was watching the gala with Marisol, his spouse. “I was excited, of course. I didn’t know what he was going to say. He’s very shy. I’m very grateful to him. A lot of people called us. I haven’t seen the gala since I stopped doing the awards…”, says Fernández, sitting along with his son in one of many rooms of his workshop in Vallecas.

The first awards had been the work of the Malaga sculptor Miguel Ortiz Berrocal. They reproduced the painter’s head and had been detachable and cellular: a camera-shaped map of Spain emerged from the cranium. Beyond the stylistic debates, it had a disadvantage: it weighed 15 kilos. “They held a public competition to renew the award. They asked me to present myself. There were not many sculptors at that time who could do it. They wanted a bronze sculpture that could be seen on stage, that weighed little, that was visible and that represented Goya, of course,” he explains. And he despatched his proposal: “inspired by the self-portraits and portraits of his disciples”, misplaced wax bronze casting – “the oldest, purest system there is” –, with a patinated brass base, 31.5 centimeters excessive and a width of between 15 and 16. And a weight between 2.5 and three kilos. “It is a success that the Academy thought of Goya, because he was one of the greatest and best narrators in History,” he provides.

José Luis gained the competition and started a relationship that lasted 32 years – he gained it in 1987, however his first works had been submitted within the 1990 version. “We went to all the ceremonies. I remember one time when they were going to present an award, it fell and broke into a thousand pieces. I was with my wife and my brother. We wanted to leave because of the embarrassment it was giving us. How could it be that it had broken? It turned out that it was a chocolate replica, because they were presenting the special effects category.”

Surrounded by sculptures in his workshop, he remembers that, annually, the Academy commissioned a distinct quantity from him. “After the ceremony they would order more, because maybe there was a team that won and you had to give one to each person. Then, always through the Academy, there were those who ordered one because they had lost it. I know that some have been sold… it’s something that also happens with the Oscars. But the process was always very serious,” he explains.

In February 2019, a name from the president of the Academy, accompanied by a letter, knowledgeable José Luis that he was stopping doing the Goya. The fourth clause of the contract allowed the Academy to terminate the contract early if it determined to vary the sculpture or the award. He mentioned goodbye by thanking “the close collaboration maintained during all these years.” “For me it was a failure. But that’s life. I’m very grateful. For me it was very important because they allowed me to focus my thinking on the creative part. What bothers me is that they have removed me from the history of the sculptures on the awards website.” The Academy’s web site jumps from Berrocal to the present statuette, which it signifies is “a reproduction from an original plaster cast of the bust made by Mariano Benlliure in 1902, preserved by the family. Our most sincere thanks to the Benlliure Foundation for its altruistic donation.”

José Luis is now retired, however he continues doing work. He alternates between his workshop in Vallecas and the Torrejón de Ardoz foundry, whose second flooring homes a museum about his work. In Torrejón he has a number of of his most important sculptures. His most up-to-date fee for the town is a sculpture of the athlete Usain Bolt.

Self-taught, he started his relationship with sculpture on bicycle rides to the Loyola faculty, on the foot of Mount Naranco, in Oviedo. Along the best way, there have been a number of marble workshops that caught his consideration. Second of ten siblings, son of a soldier and a housewife. At the age of 18 and with the cash from his first fee – a San Salvador for an Asturian Romanesque church – and what they gave him for a picket virgin from Covadonga, he moved to Madrid. He gained a nationwide sculpture prize with a picture of a woman carrying a hen in her hand.

“In those days it was easy to go to a sculptor’s workshop. You came well little dress and educated from the provinces and it was easy. ‘Do you want to work? Well, come tomorrow,’ they told you. I worked with marble, wood… I worked with Juan de Ávalos, Ramón Lapayese, with Enrique Pérez Comendador, with Antonio Suárez, who had the workshop on this same street, where I have been since 1972… The trade always caught my attention. Today with computers you can make sculpture, but they lack skill and craftsmanship,” he says.

Cristóbal, second of three siblings—Sergio, a philosopher, and Natalia, an art historian, who work at the foundry with José Luis—studied Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University and a master’s degree in documentary film at Pompeu Fabra. SiratLaxe’s third film that he edited after What burns y Mimosasit took him 25 weeks of work. “The modifying is a workforce effort with the director that has to do with the narrative, with the type of the movie, with the rhythm, with the musicality, with the work with the actors, with the selection of pictures, with the pictures… It is the ultimate type that the movie has. It jogs my memory just a little of stone sculpture, within the sense that there’s a block and that inside there are infinite sculptures and you must sculpt the picture and sound materials. There are many movies throughout the similar materials,” he explains.

Sirathe says, “it’s a very narrative movie, just a little for all audiences, but additionally very demanding of the viewer, it throws challenges. It catches you. There are individuals who settle for the proposal and others who reject it, however I feel it stays within the head for some time. And that is good.” “Since I used to be little,” he continues, “at dwelling there has at all times been a particular relationship with the Goya awards. I bear in mind my complete childhood within the workshop and seeing my father making sculptures. It is one thing very regular to see Goyas and choose them up.”

—In interviews, sometimes, they asked me who I would like to receive a Goya. And I said: ‘joé, to my son’—says José Luis.

“I was very embarrassed that he talked about me,” adds Cristóbal.

—Would you have been more excited about one made by your father?

—Yes, I would have been more excited, of course—answers the filmmaker.

“I could make you one other one everytime you need,” the sculptor tells him.