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Nicaraguan Dreams
By Victoria Donohoe - For The Inquirer
Posted on Friday, April 29, 2011
"Jesus Calma la Tempestad," part of the Ignacio Fletes Cruz exhibition at Indigo Arts Gallery.
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Ignacio Fletes Cruz of Nicaragua shows excellent primitive paintings of his native land at Indigo Arts Gallery. These landscapes and scenes of peasant life are colorful, well composed, and full of luxuriant vegetation, birds, and flowers. Such images are scarcely groundbreaking or novel - yet this may be their greatest virtue.
Cruz, a high school teacher back home, has been working on a mural with students at El Centro de Estudiantes alternative high school in Norris Square, a project cosponsored by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' Family Arts Academy.
Cruz's own story is the stuff of legend. A participant in the primitivist painting movement in the Solentiname Islands, where a Christian utopian community for art, poetry, and liberation theology was associated with the Sandinista National Liberation Front, he fled the community when it was destroyed by the Somoza government in 1977.
Indigo Arts Gallery, Crane Arts Building, 1400 N. American St.,
Noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays.
215-765-1041 or www.indigoarts.com.
Through June 4, 2011.
Article used courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer., April, 2011.
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While in Philadelphia, Fletes Cruz also painted a mural at El Centro de Estudiantes alternative high school in the Norris Square neighborhood. The mural project was co-sponsored by the Family Arts Academy program of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The murtal, entitled "Amor", was completed in eight days of work and collaboration between Ignacio, art teacher Andrew Christman, Trish Maunder and Beth Prusky of PAFA, and the students at El Centro. The school celebrated the completion of the mural on Thursday, April 14th. A day by day photo album of the mural's progress can be seen on the Indigo Arts Facebook page.
Ignacio Fletes Cruz is a veteran of the 'Primitivista' painting movement which preceded the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and has continued to flourish under both the Sandinista and subsequent governments. These largely self-taught painters work in a naive style typified by scenes of village life, lush flora and fauna, and pastoral utopias, executed in bright colors and intricate detail. The paintings recount the folklore and history of Nicaragua, sometimes presented as Biblical allegory.
The 'Primitivista' movement originated on the islands of Solentiname in Lake Nicaragua, where Father Ernesto Cardenal had formed a small utopian Christian community in 1966. The community attracted worldwide attention as a center of art, poetry and the ideals of liberation theology. But it inevitably became a target of the repressive Somoza regime. In October 1977 the National Guard invaded the island and completely destroyed the community. The survivors went into exile and many joined the Sandinista revolution. They ultimately prevailed with the overthrow of Somoza in 1979. Father Cardenal became the Minister of Culture of Nicaragua, and the surviving peasants returned to rebuild Solentiname.
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1400 North American St., #104 • Philadelphia, PA 19122
Phone: (215) 765-1041 • Toll Free: (888) INDIART • Fax: (215) 765-1042
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