Word: cossio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Both Art Editor Eliot and our correspondents are always on the lookout for new artists and artisans who may be recognized locally but are unknown elsewhere, and who are important enough to introduce to TIME readers. When Eliot was traveling in Spain in 1952, he met Francisco Cossio who had never had an exhibition in the U.S. but was acclaimed at home as one of Spain's foremost contemporaries. TIME'S story on Cossio (Sept. 21, 1953) was accompanied by a full-page color reproduction of his mural of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John...
...first Madrid show in 1945 made Cossio famous overnight. His second, in 1950, secured his place as Spain's foremost living artist. The mural commission followed. Cossio took a studio atop a downtown Madrid skyscraper and established a daily routine: mornings working alone on the mural at the church, afternoons painting and resting alone in his studio, evenings chatting with friends at the Café Gijon, an artists' hangout...
...Cossio delights in explaining the subject matter of his finished mural. The crystal sphere at the bottom represents the human soul. Within it is a castle symbolizing the Church Militant. Spiraling up around the sphere are martyrs, saints and dignitaries of the Carmelite order. Borne amidst them on a shaft of light are St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross,* welcomed from above by the Madonna, and Child...
Illuminating by Removing. How does he achieve his extraordinary luminosity? "Oh, that," says Cossio modestly, "is nothing but a trick. Most artists paint by laying on color; I do the reverse, scraping off the colors, so that the bright underpainting can shine through." How did he arrive at his style? "Well, in the mystical world the logical order of nature can be destroyed, and this is a source of unlimited possibilities. For example, I did not feel it necessary to use clouds as supports for the figures. The musical instruments I made transparent, like plastic. And since saints radiate light...
...Cossio does not mention his chief innovation: a purely arbitrary use of perspective to create a crackling composition that shines, in Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' phrase, like "shook foil." By his practice of boldness within bounds, Cossio may be opening a new chapter in the history of ecclesiastical...