Monument to Alonso Quesada

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1955 · Authors: Plácido Fleitas

The monument before us today was made in 1955. The sculptor had thought of using Fuerteventura Stone, but finally opted for bronze, as he himself put it, the varnish effect of the bronze sits better with the face and also the memory of Alonso Quesada.

The bust rises up over a white granite pedestal, with his name, birth date and death date written on it. The poet is represented unclothed, with clearly marked facial traits: a wide forehead, protruding cheekbones, lower jaw tucked under and hooked nose. His eyes are hollow and his shoulders are unevenly balanced, even in his pectorals, as one is lower than the other.

As for its style, it can be said it delves into a search for ethnical identity that the Luján Pérez school of Gran Canarian artists worked on, and which Plácido Fleitas investigates in order to offer the fruits of the creation of a prototype called indigenista. In the specific case of the effigy of Quesada, the portrait has lost a little authenticity in order to fall in line with this objective; the prominence of the cheekbones, jaw, etc, are proof of that.

Of all the effigies made by Fleitas that have served as a public distinction to different leading figures, it is the one of Alonso Quesada that stands out the most, as it is deemed the only one that reflects this kind of concern. His posture is innovating and spot on, totally lacking in rigidness, even in the roughness of the skin. 

It is also true that the change that went on in the prevailing environment behind this work has had a negative effect on him, as it is not the same as his figure being cut out over the sea, as it was previously, to how it is now, inserted in a vegetation in which the green of the bronze is lost within it. 

In the inaugural act, poet Saulo Torón cited:

«That we should come together as we did years ago, in which we were colleagues in life, in which Art we were supreme: magnificent Néstor and eminent Tomás, the great songbirds over the Atlantic sea».

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