Through painting “you go through life with emotion”: Manuel Suasnávar

San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chis. For the creator Manuel Suasnávar Pastrana (Mexico City, 1946), who was the object of a tribute for his 60 years of career, painting “is a vehicle through which you travel through life with emotion.”

Painting, he stressed, “is a vehicle that you travel with because the moment you imprint an image or a gesture when painting, you deposit emotion and in the end it is that which the viewer perceives, who often gets excited not by what the painting describes, but by what it projects from the contained emotion.”

The tribute paid to him by the government of Chiapas through the State Council for Culture and the Arts of Chiapas (Coneculta), took place on Friday at 7 p.m. at the facilities of the San Cristóbal Museum (Musac), located in the old municipal palace.

Photo La Jornada

Alongside the tribute, an exhibition was inaugurated, consisting of 55 works from private collectors and some by Suasnávar Pastrana, which will be on display at the Musac, located in front of the central park of San Cristóbal.

Musac director Emilio Gómez Ozuna said the exhibition will be open to the public during August and September, “taking advantage of the 200 years” since Chiapas joined Mexico, an anniversary celebrated every September 14.

Manuel Suasnávar, 78 years old, was born in Mexico City. He is the son of two Chiapas residents: Plinio Suasnávar, originally from San Cristóbal, and Carmen Pastrana, from Tapilula. He decided to settle in Chiapas 41 years ago, after living in Mexico City. He completed his professional studies at the San Carlos Academy.

Interviewed before the tribute, he said that when he came to Chiapas “I began to rediscover the origins of my lineage; here I found myself and said, this is where I come from.” He has exhibited his work in the United States and several countries in South and Central America and Europe.

Gómez Ozuna pointed out that Manuel Suasnávar “is the oldest artist from Chiapas and has the longest career, because we are talking about 60 years of his work; with an academic career. His work is very playful, joyful and focused on the hot land, on the central valley of Chiapas, where he develops and feeds back from all this discourse that he offers us.”

Photo La Jornada

He added: “Having him at the Musac is an honor because he is one of the greatest painters of Chiapas for his career, for his palette, and he no longer needs to sign. If you look at his work you already know it is his. His characters are very Chiapas, very much from their surroundings and context, he works with tourism, realism, figuration, dreams. He is a very complete artist, one of the most recognized in Chiapas.”

-What does this tribute represent for you? – Suasnávar Pastrana was asked.

-The tribute means a lot to my children and my family. They really like the fact that their father is recognized for the effort he makes, but the only thing it produces in me is the anguish of the fact that time is running out and I can paint less and less. If before I could work 8 or 10 hours a day, now I only work 3 or 4.

He added that “recently, a hundred paintings were taken from me to Brasilia and there I said that it would be the last thing I would do, but one goes on and on and I could not stop doing this. I have no other choice but to be a painter.”