{"id":472,"date":"2023-04-07T12:59:59","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/?page_id=472"},"modified":"2023-06-09T00:21:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T06:21:12","slug":"articulo-de-ricardo-garivay-sobre-la-vida-de-luis-strempler","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/articulo-de-ricardo-garivay-sobre-la-vida-de-luis-strempler\/","title":{"rendered":"Article by Ricardo Garibay about the life of Luis Strempler."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Foreword<\/strong>

This is about an artist, an excellent artist, an exceptional artist of sculpture, a renowned artist of painting, painting that captures reality, as expressive as D\u00edaz Miron\u00b4s poetry. It is about an artist who lives his work with a smiling enjoyment, with an intimate excitement that permeates the bronze and the canvas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Man<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luis Strempler was born on June 21, the longest day of the year, the day in which there is more light than any other.

\u201cImagine,\u201d he exclaims, \u201cI was granted that day!\u201d

Not too tall or stout, he has surprinsigly smooth hands, a white complexion worn by jungles and inclement weather, rough lips and a hoarse yet kind voice. His eyes are permanently red as a consequence of keeping himself occupied with his work. Never separating himself from the easel or the table, even in darkness, hardly looking at what he is doing, he paints and sculpts, walking to and fro, piercing a cloud of smoke.

His mannerisms are not hurried, giving the impression that he has enough time. If one looks at his sculptures, one finds in them a kind of lovely eternity, an incalculable patience that subtracts from time its right and its transformation, leaving intact its secret dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wears casual clothes, blue jeans and bulky shoes. When an occasion is formal, however, he dresses in tailored trousers and an open collared, Charra style jacket. His sparse hair, a mixture of blond and white, is well styled. One has to understand that he dresses for formal occasions.

I arrive early at his workshop.

\u201cLet us have breakfast first,\u201d he says.
\u201cDon t take me to a restaurant,\u201d I beg him.
\u201cWhat a relief! I thought that you would want to go to a restaurant.\u201d
\u201cNo,\u201d I say, \u201clets just have breakfast in the marketplace.\u201d

We are in Tepoztlan. He greets everyone we pass.

\u201cGood morning, Lencho.\u201d
\u201cGood morning, Margarito.\u201d
\u201cGood morning, Don Luis.\u201d
\u201cGood morning, Camila.\u201d
\u201cGood morning to you, Don Luis.\u201d

Workers and farmers address him respectfully, with reverence and familiarity. We arrive at the market, the stand of the pancia. Steam rises from deep soup bowls. Thick tortillas made of yellow corn and memelas with chicharron are in pieces called chales.

\u201cI never thought you would prefer the marketplace,\u201d says Luis Strempler, eating and drinking as if he were twenty years old. I order a beer. He does not drink alcohol.

\u201cOccasionally I have a brandy\u2026 There was a time when I drank a lot,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen I would go to Juarez Hospital to draw corpses, bones, organs and muscles. That environment, not foreign to me, was awful and ugly. One day, medical doctors, students, hospital workers and I, all accustomed to the morgue\u2019s odors, burst through its doors to escape the intolerable stench. The pestilence was hell. And, you know what it was? It was the cirrohoted liver of an alcoholic. It was then that promised myself I would not die like this man and I stopped drinking forever. When I was a very close friend of Fernandez the Indian, I used to drink a lot. I would visit him in Coyoacan. The Indian always drank tequilla. \u201cPrepare the gallinas,\u201d he would say. The gallinas were little onion cups filled with expensive tequilla and salt. That was drinking! We usually had several gallinas. Kings we were!\u2026 But no more.\u201d

\u201cWhy were you such good friends with the Indian, Luis?\u201d
\u201cI used to make animated drawings. I was involved in the movies.\u201d
\u201cThe portrait that you did of the Indian is a masterpiece.\u201d

He smiles without humility, yet without boasting, as if there were no flattery.

\u201cThe animated drawings helped me. They were a study of motion.\u201d

Another morning he met with me.

\u201cWe are going to have breakfast at home with my wife\u201d he says. \u201cShe got up at four
o\u00b4clock to prepare tamales\u201d

\u201cLook,\u201d he continues, \u201cI came to Tepoztlan in a jeep. That was all I had after having
had so much. l used my jeep to help those good people build their houses and it was there my jeep died. I used to go to Tepoztlans marketplace to admire the woman who is my present wife. I would say to her, what a beautiful lady! Gee, what a beautiful lady!
She was serious and would not talk to me or look at me until one day when I asked her what was wrong.
\u00b4My son is sick,\u00b4 she said.
Let me help you,\u00b4 I offered.
With the care of physicians and hospitals, the boy regained his health. After his recovery she spoke to me. I would see her there, working behind her stand, preparing the tacos, sopes and garnachas.
\u201cWhat a pretty lady;* I convinced her.
She had six children when I met her. And look how beautiful life is that I have been able to educate them! Together, we have one girl, ten years old now. Citlali is her name. She plays the second violin in the Symphonic Orchestra of Tepoztlan. She has been playing for many years. I was married a long time ago. I have seven children, yes, seven, all of them educated. It is a wonderful life here in Tepoztlan.\u201d

\u201cYou are going to meet my wife now,\u201d he says.

We arrive at his home in Tepoztlan. It is not millonaires neighborhood. It is an old town of gabled rooves, tree trunks, flowers, fronds, stone fences, narrow pathways and fruit gardens. The house has sparse, bare furniture and floors of thin, flat stone and tile. His wife welcomes us with peaceful dignity. She offers few words, her eyes looking straight ahead, silently moving from the stove to the table and back again. She serves us a delicious breakfast of chompantle with eggs, pork, tamales and very hot rice atole. Chompantle are the flowers of the Colorin tree. The artist often eats these flowers cooked in various ways.

We return to the workshop, a fifteen meter long by six or seven meter wide piece of land with grass, fruit trees, flowers and an old brick building. The building\u2019s high ceiling, made of cement, has two large windows. Inside, there is an evident disorder. There are many dusty draftsman tables, work benches and sculpture supports. In the middle of the large room is a short table for ashtrays and fruit. Enormous horse heads, still in wires, stand in the rear of the workshop, while bookshelves with works of literature, art and sculpture line the far wall. Here lies Mercedes, a delicate nude, there stand two gamecocks face to face, and further, a giant acrilic of two gamecocks in the air, at the threshold of rage, frames the wall. A refrigerator containing only a newly made sculpture and ten or twenty cigarette packages marks the entrance. Immediately next is a stereo cassette deck and hundreds of cassettes. Luis Strempler listens to music continuously while he works; Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and others. His taste for opera is up-to-date, his folklore knowledge, extensive. He laughs easily even while telling of sad events. He talks about himself as ifhe were relating the story of someone else, someone who was left behind, who knows where?\u2026 He cries only when he recalls the death of Gabriel Ramos Millan, the man who supported the beginning of his career. At the funeral he emembers that inside Millan\u00b4s house were important people and politicians, while in the street, holding their small bouquets of flowers, were farmers, standing until dawn, silent, hurt, indigenous and anonymous.

THE LIFE<\/strong>

Entering Tepoztlan by the old road, to the right, at the first turn, is Citlali Street which Strempler constructed and gave his daughter\u00b4s name. At the end of this road lies his workshop. Here, as everywhere, there are many tree trunks, flowers and densely forrested hills.

Strempler\u00b4s father w\u1ea1s German, his mother from Zacualtipan, Hidalgo. His father worked with petroleum in Huasteca and liked baseball. He used to organize teams and contests between rivals. In 1938, refusing to deny his German origin, he was treated as an enemy and fired from his job without indemnity. Luis Strempler was ten years old at that time when his family had to move to Santa Julia, a poor suburb of Mexico City. There he washed glass windows, cleaned as a janitor in a barber shop and worked as an attendant in a gas station. He, as well as the other children in his family, had to help earn money. His father fell sick with silicosis as a consequence of having worked in a mine and died soon after.

Strempler visited Zacualtipan on his first vacation. There he went to a fair and laughed at a husky farmer who happily rode the carrousel. His laughter grew as the farmer paid for one turn after another. Seeing that he was being made fun of, the farmer jumped from his wooden horse and grabbed Strempler at the neck.

\u201cWho are you laughing, you son of\u2026\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMr. Ramos Millan then died in an airplane crash. He was coming from Oaxaca when the plane went down at Popocatepetl. We immediately went to help. At the funeral we stood in the midst of politicians and important people while farmers stood outside holding flowers in the cold street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cThereafter, we painters travelled from town to town, through small villages, many communities, painting and selling our works. At the same time we distributed hybrid corn, one handful to each farmer to improve their crops. We did this in honor of Gabriel Ramos Millan, who was known as the \u201cCorn Apostle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cAndres Henestrosa then asked me,
\u00b4Would you like to go to the southeast jungles?\u00b4
\u00b4Yes, but when?\u00b4 I inquired.
\u00b4Tomorrow,\u00b4 Henestrosa said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cl left with him and stayed eight months in the jungle, eight months without leaving Lacandonia. The mosquitos devored me as did the sun and humidity. I was practically green when I left. Once in a while, we would venture to the villages and peer in from the outskirts. My love of the jungle enveloped me in its loneliness, splendid beauty and majesty. I have looked for a place more beautiful but have never found one. If you can resist its cruelty, the jungle becomes a virtual paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cIt was in Lacandonia where Imet Carlos Frey, the German-American who discovered Bonampak, and who on a later expedition drowned in a river. I met Franco Lazaro Gomez, \u00b4Franquito, as well. In a certain way Iwas his mentor. He was a barber in Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas. When left my paintings with him, he told me that he too was an artist.
\u00b4I believe I can also paint, he said.
\u00b4Go ahead,\u00b4 I replied.
I taught his some techniques and now his works are in the Tuxtla Gutierrez museum. What a pity he died so young in the jungle. I also met Arkady Filder, an experienced traveler of those virgin jungles.\u201d

\u201cI left nearly green from the jungle, full of nostalgia, unable to forget, wanting to return, but it is impossible now. I returned to Mexico City and began traveling throughout the Republic, painting and providing corn. Eventually, I settled in my workshop in La Villa. Next came my involvement in the movies, animated drawings, paintings in vertiginous movement. Although we produced many works, only two or three proved worthwhile. Sculpture soon became my constant obsession as I realized my yearning to sculpt.\u201d

\u201cl came to Tepoztlan fifteen years ago,I already told you how. Previously, contracted by millonares, Itravelled to Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and Chicago. A long time elapsed in those journeys and in each location I left behind my work and my love.\u201d

\u201c\u2026You know something? Itis good to start life for the second time. Ibegan again here, at fifty years old. With that many years, you know what you want and how to achieve it. You don\u00b4t waste time as before, when you were young, searching for your calling.
You work in your field toward established goals. Temptations no longer distract you.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At fifty years old, I found my place and my perfect companion. I adopted her six children and they have made me immensely happy. Together, we have had a daughter. Life can give you everything if you want it.\u201d

\u201cI used to carry stones and construction materials for the people of Tepoztlan in my jeep, my only property of value. I wore it out. As you can see, a car is not indispensable. With my first earnings I bought the piece of land for my workshop. Then, l constructed my wife\u00b4s house on her property. I own nothing there, but with the love they have given me I do not need more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Here I am!\u2026 Breathe in this grove, these flowers, these magic mountains, the peace of the streets, the sincerity of the people, so faithful, humble and loving! They are talented people. Together they have formed a symphonic orchestra. Though some can hardly hold instruments, they play very well and are generously supported by the wealthy. Teachers, students, and the director all perform efficiently and punctually, producing a good impression. They have traveled through many cities, even up to Tlayacapan for a concert. Don\u00b4t laugh, you\u00b4Il see how this orchestra will grow! Each morning the children attend school and each afternoon they practice their music.\u201d\u00a0

\u201cFrom their churches my neighbors bring me XVI, XVII and XVIII century sculptures of Christ, damaged by time, broken, indeed previous masterpieces. I rebuild them without affecting their antiquity. Invariably, spies watch closely, taking shifts while work.\u201d

\u201cI don t understand\u2026 Spies? What for?\u201d
\u201cThere is an ancient tradition that people used to hide treasures inside these sculptures of Christ. The people who bring them to me wonder if a treasure lies inside their sculpture. Indeed there does, a treasure which comes from faith in Christ, not gold, but the faith they have in God, which is gold itself\u2026 Isn\u00b4t it? The townspeople also bring sculptures of the baby Jesus which they dress and carry with flowers to church. I charge them nothing. They can\u00b4t believe it.\u201d

\u201cWell, here I am, getting up at dawn. I climb the mountains and am inspired by their beauty to paint and create the sculptures you see now. Your namesake, Ricardo Garcia, does the rest. He completes all that is necessary for my works to be known and for us to make our living.\u201d

\u201cLook at these roosters. Do you like them?\u201d
\u201cRoosterst That is nothing more than twisted iron.\u201d
\u201cNo, no, the roosters are here. If you come back tomorrow or the day after, you will
see the roosters were already here.\u201d

Indeed it is true, after a couple of days the roosters become apparent to me. Two gamecocks follow the hidden lines of the iron wires. These detailed gamecocks, incredibly alive, meet, face to face, enraged, ready to destroy each other. Ricardo Garcia will cast them in bronze and they will become masterpieces of devotion, nostalgia and the expressive love of Luis Strempler, the sculptor.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE ARTIST
<\/strong>
His hands are small but strong and rather wide, his fingers powerful yet extraordinarily smooth. Through them enters the intermittent orgasm of sculpture. As the clay takes form, Stempler\u00b4s palms and fingertips lighten in touch. They are modelling, molding the figure, creating the essence of life itself. In a way, they are committed to something cosmic. The completion of their assignment creates yet another entity in the world. His hands and fingers feel, think and sculpt without conscious effort, providing Strempler great enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cWhat can I say, it is a vigorous pleasure.\u201d

Nothing that can be sculpted can hide its secrets from Luis Strempler. He can model any form, any volume. No complexity evades him. Above all, he is able to endow meaning to the material in his hands.
The essence of the horse, the female nude and the gamecock, places the observer in a natural scene, suprisingly familiar, as each sculpture assumes its place in the order of creation. His bronze pieces radiate a fierce and ardent love, a sense of life, profound and religious. At first glance the impact is whole. Upon closer examination of its exquisite details the being comes alive. The bronze creation captures that portion of reality which fascinates the artist. Admiring his roosters, his women and his horses, excitement grows, evidencing itself in the smiles of his observers. Stempler\u00b4s elegance and perfection, coupled with his enthusiasm and style, overjoy the observer. I realize the parallel between Strempler\u00b4s work and Saint Thomas Aquinas revelations. A vigorous and well ordered reason can be found in both.\u00a0

Now, a contracted artist, the sculptor recalls his childhood fantasies and enthusiastically creates the Chapultepec musical animals. Together, they exude the gracefulness and spirited youth of his first years. The saxophone lizard, the clarinet toucan, the cello owl, the lion, the orangoutang and others conjure images of our delightful childhood memories, an exclusive world reserved for the most delicate pages of fairy tales.\u00a0

I, myself, am obsessed with Strempler\u00b4s irascible gamecocks. Luis Strempler comes from a family which bred fighting cocks. He knows them well.

\u201cThe gamecock is a king. He represents both the fight and the triumph. He lives between two extremes, victory and death. Raising a gamecock is an art. It is like conditioning an athlete, training a boxer for the ultimate fight. The battle itself is like lightening in rapid succession, almost imperceivable. In my sculpting thatis precisely what I seek, the speed and glory of their attack, the mortal blow which suddenly usurps one contender\u00b4s life. You must witness how they rise up in an explosive flurry, until one falls to the ground, dead. The combat lasts but a few seconds. The glory of the victory is in a way horryfing. I have seen cocks rape their dead enemy and sing of their accomplishment. This is violence to its highest degree, a level of emotion the small and beautiful beast can provoke.\u201d\u00a0

\u201cYou must educate and train your gamecock if you want a champion. A champion is prepared for battle, provoked by a tame rooster before entering the ring. You must thrust the cock forward and pull it back, teaching it to attack from all directions. You must pass it around your legs in a figure eight so that it understands all angles of the fight. You must hold it to the ground so that it learns to hit hard and acquires strong, aggressive, lateral movement. You have to rock it to sleep so that it learns balance and how to avoid an enemy\u00b4s attack. You must provoke the passive rooster from his sedentary state and create in him the fire of a lethal killing machine.\u201d

\u201cFor food, you must nourish the gamecock with hard-boiled eggs, wheat, corn, barley and raw meat. We provide ours, as well, with open grass in which to catch insects, rich in protein. Now he is ready! We look for a rival of similar weight, a competitor to kill. It is this gamecock I paint and sculpt. I emphasize his dignity, his grandeur, his color, multiplied by all colors, his great beauty and elegance.\u201d

\u201cIt is a most cruel savageness, I mean, atrocious.\u201d
\u201cYes, but that is life,\u201d he says, \u201cand it captivates you in the paintings and sculptures.\u201d
\u201cThe are splendid, marvelous,\u201d I can t deny it.
\u201cIt is all worthwhile!\u201d Strempler almost screams. \u201d \u2026 Here eat this giant chavacano.
They are from here, from Tepoztlan. Look at their size and taste how sweet they are.\u201d

\u201cl will comment little about your painting,\u201d I say to him.
\u201cl think it is a testimony to the life of Mexican villages and neighborhoods and to the lives of the common people. You incorporate all colors, exhausting the rainbow. You give so much importance to the smallest detail, down to the wink of an eye. Your work gives witness to your character. It is surreal, as are you. Nothing in you is false or languishes. Everything about you reflects your ancestry and toward that end you carry your talents of painting and sculpture. The barbaric instincts that drive you reflect those which Ortega and Gasset pointed out as the venerable humus of life. We will discuss more about your painting another time. There isn\u00b4t enough time today.\u201d

\u201cDo whatever you want,\u201d he says. \u201cYou know best.\u201d
\u201cOne thing\u2026\u201d I begin.
\u201cWhat else do you want?\u201d
\u201cWhat do you expect of yourself?\u201d

I look at him. He smiles, lifting his head to face the forbidding mountains.

\u201cTo work, I want nothing more than to work with my hands, my fingers, my wires, my brushes. I have yearings I don\u00b4t know what to do with. I have the impulse to sculpt enormous things, whole mountain ranges. I know that I can\u00b4t accomplish all that I dream. Sometimes, these feelings push me to the point of almost drowning.\u201d

Epilogue<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was born in 1928.
His youthful spirit and genius lives on in him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Ricardo Caribay.
Translated by Amy Wilkinson and Pamela Hughes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Foreword This is about an artist, an excellent artist, an exceptional artist of sculpture, a renowned artist of painting, painting that captures reality, as expressive as D\u00edaz Miron\u00b4s poetry. It is about an artist who lives his work with a smiling enjoyment, with an intimate …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-472","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929,"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/472\/revisions\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grupostrempler.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}