«When you work you have to get into an interior capsule»

CRISTINA DEL RIO Aviles

On the top floor of the downtown building where he lives, Vicente Menéndez-Santarúa (Candás, 1936) has his particular ecosystem. A workshop full of finished and half-finished projects, photographs and newspapers that challenge him every time he walks through the door. He looks over and concentrates on the current one because, although he doesn't consider any lost or finished, he has learned to ignore them, to leave them in the background. He sits in his backless swivel chair and faces in front of him, on a lathe, the mold of the sculpture to which he now devotes all his attention: Quini's. His eldest son, Samuel, is also in the studio this day, the only one who has followed the artistic path of his father and who now teaches him digital skills. And 'Santa', at 85 years old, agrees. And he obeys. And learn. Although, everything is said, he does not finish convincing him.

-How is the?

-Recovering. The doctor recommended that I work on the cognitive part, that I exercise without exhausting myself.

- What is he working on now?

I have a lot on my hands. As a cameo of my wife, that she is a beauty.

-The last thing was your sculpture of Quini?

-I'm still in it. But it goes well. I am working on modern techniques, making calculations and looking for suitable materials because everything will depend on Quini's doll. According to the irons that we put, this will be the scale. Approximately.

- Is he a soccer fan or is it just a coincidence that he has immortalized so many soccer players and coaches?

-Those sculptures have been commissioned, but I am a soccer fan. I trained the Candás children's team many years ago. And we are group champions! It was the time when I did 'The fight of the dolphins'.

-Any favorite work or that has been a sleeplessness for its complexity?

-There are several because each one has a motivation, a memory and a technical part that I achieved and I saw the progress I was making. I would stick with 'Las marineras', which represents the sleepless night these women spent when their husbands went out to sea, and 'Los madreñeros', in painting. In sculpture and due to its difficulty, that of Philippe Cousteau and also those of Dr. Carlos Jiménez Díaz and Severo Ochoa.

-Painter and sculptor, has sculpture been the one that has brought you the most recognition?

-The greatest satisfaction was when we exhibited the wax bust of Carlos Jiménez Díaz in a jewelry store, and Pío Cabanillas was there and Pipo Carreño and Fernando Wes passed by and they were amazed. Dr. Carlos Jiménez wept in front of the sculpture. He told me: "Santarúa, I'm going to take him to Paris."

-Is recognition important?

-It depends on the person. I separate it. It doesn't influence me. My satisfaction is to plastically achieve a bas-relief or an expression or a touch that you see has reached the soul. That's when it motivates me.

-As a painter, is a better sculptor?

-Do not. They are different techniques. The goal and the challenge is the same.

- Is there any material that you like more to work with?

-The clay.

-And any physical quality needed to be a sculptor?

-Tact is important. There is a moment when the hand, due to its anatomical structure, has a limit and you have to pick up a tool that ends up being an extension of the hands. I make my own tools.

Do you have any hobbies when it comes to work?

I like to be focused. I have a music that my son recommended me that is Nordic, a xana song that is very relaxing.

-And a work routine?

-When a moment of inspiration arrives, I leave my wife planted or in the middle of breakfast. Now, because of the pills I have to take, I'm like a solid soldier.

-Apart from being your workshop, what does this space represent for you?

-It is a cluster of ideas of which I never see the end. He always tells me something. I am looking at a painting and it is demanding that I go further and further. There comes a time when stopping is not my thing but of time. I stop, and not because it's finished. A work is never finished. There is something about the sketch that I love: the loose stains, not mixing on the palette but on the canvas, I like the big brush with strong and hard bristles that obeys me.

-I think he is learning to model with a computer, starting in digital sculpture. Is it so?

I'm with the cat. When my son gives me the tablet, I am learning. The funny thing is that in high school I didn't recommend it to the students because I knew that the compass was going to disappear.

-You were a teacher for many years. Did you like to teach?

-I loved teaching. I told the students: «You have to learn this motto: order is the law of the blind» and I ordered them to enter class with their eyes closed to find the place, the square and the set square. They learned to handle it with one hand, which is not easy. And with the other, the compass.

-The former mayor Pilar Varela and the current councilor Mariví Monteserín were her students at the La Luz institute. How was the drawing?

- Regular (laughs).

-I asked him if he liked to teach because the artist's work is quite lonely, isn't it?

-Well, yes, because you have to get into an interior capsule and make a world there. You build it, you build it, you look for solutions, you move forward... It is very difficult to break that capsule.

-You, who have so much work in public space. How do you feel when you are a victim of vandalism? Or are they occupational hazards?

-I am very sorry, and I also see that there is ignorance because they go against a subject that means nothing to them. They do not see the significance of the work. For example, Woody Allen's in Oviedo, whose glasses are broken every two times three.

- Is there anything left to do?

-Very much. The proof is there (and she draws a semicircle at arm's length in his workshop). A work is never finished.

-But I am referring to a theme or a support or an assignment that you would have liked to take on.

-(He shrugs).

-However, without finishing I see some here in his workshop.

-Yes, Marcelo Campanal's, for example, or architect Oscar Niemeyer's, which I also have to restore because when a hot summer came, it fell. A nephew of hers saw her and was scared. He took pictures of her to show them to her. He was still alive.