VARIATIONS AND QUESTIONS ON THE SAME SUBJECT MATTER

If anything characterizes Antonio Almaraz's life, it is his absolute fidelity to himself; and the same is true of his artistic work. Put this way it may seem simple, but the elementary is usually the most difficult thing; especially if we take into account the multitude of ideas that we perceive in our environment and that make it almost impossible for us not to deviate from the path.

The little said so far is not a more or less accurate personal view of Almaraz's work. On the contrary, it can be found in a good part of his writings, which, although brief and susceptible to provide more details, show his art position, which is none other than the same subject matter carried out with different techniques and materials; and, above all, or rather, below all, the structure that is not noticed, but that orders the outside. Thematic and technique placed at the service of the materials.

Almaraz speaks of this and other things in La variable humana y la estructura subyacente, an intense and emotive text where he contrasts his reality with another more fragmented and less lasting; or, in other words, a border between consonance and dissonance: a frontier between consonance and dissonance, between a classical musical composition that is sustained on the tonic and dominant chords to achieve a solid framework, and another dodecaphonic one that pursues the opposite and opens a door to the division of the form, as the cubists did before through geometric forms, the impressionists by separating the brushstrokes or Ludwig van Beethoven when composing his cycles of variations on the same theme, something that was not new, but that in his pieces reached heights of genius only comparable to those of Johann S. Bach.

Both Bach in the 30 Goldberg Variations and Beethoven in the 33 Diabelli Variations modified the main theme from very different approaches. Bach always kept the Aria or main theme in mind, and none of the 30 variations achieves full autonomy. Beethoven, however, forgot the waltz or main theme, and some variations achieve total freedom; although the most surprising thing is that he made variations on variations. The never seen before.

It would be a mistake to think that Beethoven acted in this way to discredit tradition, when he only intended to replace the unitary value that art had had until then; and he did so by opening a door that, through a long corridor, would lead to the disarticulation of all artistic manifestations, especially in the twentieth century.

Although distant in time, and without pretending to make comparisons, that is obvious, the example of the Diabelli Variations has something to do with the aforementioned text of Almaraz. It shows that the variations on the same theme in any artistic manifestation has been and is still a constant in artists of all times, and that the difficult thing is to find a main theme that allows exhausting all its stylistic possibilities through different techniques and materials.

It is not possible to finish without saying that Antonio Almaraz has found in doubt his aria or waltz. Uncertainty as the main theme to reflect the inability of human beings to face the uneasiness caused by their own ghosts, which ask again and again for the meaning of things. This new exhibition, as was the case with the previous ones, contains the answers to his questions, always the same.

Pero yo…sigo...caminando [una deriva de la variable humana y la estructura subyacente] (But I... keep...walking [a derivation of the human variable and the underlying structure]), is also, as its title indicates, a series of landscapes, of personal itineraries repeated over and over again. So alike and yet so different at the same time.

Ignacio Guerra Núñez