Guillermo Monsanto
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Guatemala is a country of artists. Literature, performing arts, and visuals feature a huge contingent of brilliant protagonists whose creative projections honor them and make them remarkable inside and outside of Guatemala.
Lezzueck Asturias’ initial career began in the 1990s alongside authors such as David Halfon, Renato Osoy, Darío Escobar and Regina José Galindo, all outstanding artists from the hinge of the 20th and 21st centuries. Early on he went to Germany to study at the prestigious Weimar School of Drawing and Painting, of which he is now a professor. In Europe he assumes his mother’s surname to present himself to the public as Lezzueck Coosemans; Here he keeps his paternal surname and is seen to flow in different types of activities between auctions, museums and art galleries.
Already in Germany he solved a problem that many artists find it difficult to understand. That painting is not just painting what you see, but what you feel. In this way he found the metaphysical current and a new surrealism in which the human being, the flora, but especially the animal kingdom. His painting is a sublimation of consciousness and the desire for natural coexistence between species and man.
He went to Germany early to study at the prestigious Weimar School of Drawing and Painting.
Making colors difficult to combine as their own, Asturias generates a habitat of luminous water colors and pastel celestial colors in which the vital liquid and the limpid atmosphere stand out as sublimated means of peace and beauty. The sea, always serene, as a germinal source of life, is the support of shells, boats and other transports that always seem to migrate towards new directions. As if its passengers were looking for a promised land full of hope, longing and good omens.
The composition is harmonious; There is always a balance that resolves with the incorporation of its different subjects or with the good administration of the pigment and other elements. Each work is a window to a fantastic, dignified and ideal world. Despite making use of the everyday knowledge, each painting is a surprise whose history fascinates by its elegance.
Bears, exotic, mysterious and hieratic female feathers, tigers, whales, rabbits, dodo birds, seals, in short, an inexhaustible Noah’s ark nourishes his imagination, which the artist himself defines as “a visual poetic narrative that deals with flora, fauna and people ”; it also indicates that its mission is to convey a positive and hopeful message to the viewer ”. But there is also a caveat, as “elements of the image symbolically refer to the crucial role of humans in interacting” with the environment.
His photography is eminently scenic and shares surreal airs with his painting. There is solidity and security in it. In other words, dialogue consistently.
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