The Fine Arts Gold Medal to four legends of our arts

This Thursday closed not with a clasp but with gold medals, a three-day run to recognize great minds of our culture, the delivery ceremonies of the Fine Arts Medals, corresponding to the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.

On this last day, the Manuel M. Ponce Room hosted the exceptional ceremony of delivery of the Fine Arts Gold Medals for four luminaries, legends of our arts: playwright, theater director, communication theorist, producer and poet Miguel Sabido; the celebrated composer of international influence Gabriela Ortiz; the abstract painter and sculptor Irma Palacios and, posthumously, one of the histrionic pillars of our cinematography and stage art, Héctor Bonilla.

Pretty, disciplined and playful

Regarding Héctor Bonilla, who died on November 25, the actress Julieta Egurrola, a friend of the aforementioned, said: “There are people who without looking for them or calling them appear in moments of crisis, of changes, and as the years go by, these beings become in indispensable. Héctor is one of those beings in my personal and artistic life (…) it goes without saying the importance he has in our culture, in the DNA of Mexicans and in our acting guild. Héctor is an indisputable reference (…) a man, an actor and a citizen who raised his voice for those who did not have it”.

To the evocative words of the protagonist of filmic treasures such as “Meridiano 100” (1973), “Rojo amanecer” (1989), “Luces de la noche” (1994) and “Chronicle of a breakfast” (2000) were added those of his son, Fernando Bonilla. “His artistic legacy from him, fundamentally from him, consists in the fact that he never had the slightest shyness in trying to do everything in the most professional and dedicated way, from a frivolous soap opera to a theatrical process that took many months of research. In that sense, he has a track record that is hard to find today and in his generation, almost non-existent.”

And he explained: “He was a maniac with punctuality, he was a very hard-working man, always the most disciplined, but he allowed himself to complement himself with incredible candor and an overwhelming playful capacity. Undoubtedly, the compass of his creative processes was the pleasure, fun and joy that his work generated for him ”.

It was his wife, Sofía Álvarez, who received the Gold Medal for the actor.

Known, the luxury of Mexico

To recognize the legacy of the playwright Miguel Sabido, the actress Lisbi Cuéllar, his student, used the words of Bertolt Brecht: “there are men who fight one day and are good. There are others that fight for a year and are better. Some fight for many years and are very good. But there are those who fight all their lives, those are the essential ones”. Sabido, he highlighted, “defines himself as Nepantla, the union of the Spanish and indigenous worlds in its purest expression (…) Miguel Sabido is essential, he is the luxury of Mexico.”

Cuéllar explained that the honoree “built a theatrical mural that covers the most important moments in our history”, with works such as “False Chronicle of Juana la Loca”, “Conquest”, “The Masks of Sor Juana”, “Juan Diego and Guadalupe ”, “Carlota Empress” and “Soldadera”, which are the result of a life dedicated to the rescue and preservation of the historical and cultural wealth of Mexico.

After receiving the medal and melting into a hug with the one who preceded him in the voice, the maestro put forward: “fortunately, the two Mexicos that separated the terrible Laws of the Indies coexisted in my chest in a harmonious way, hence all my life has tried to reconcile them. One of the ways to do this was the practice and study of the prodigious Mexican ceremonial body (…) for this reason I have fought all my life, to preserve that system, because I know it, I love it and I enjoy it”.

Finally, the playwright dedicated the great distinction “to each and every self-sacrificing steward who has preserved the ceremonies for 400 years, sometimes taking the bread out of their mouths.”

Palaces, of audacity and temperance

About Irma Palacios there was talk of a fundamental woman, belonging to a generation of artistic geniuses who managed to open a gap for the exploration of new plastic fields in the country. And she, settled in abstraction, became one of the most prominent.

The poet, essayist and translator Jaime Moreno Villarreal was in charge of introducing the medal for the painter. “This prize for a painter is also a light on a group that we can call generational that has been somewhat eclipsed. We could say that it is the second generation of the Rupture. In the case of the teacher Palacios, it is the abstract aspect that Vicente Rojo, Manuel Felguérez and, very notably, Lilia Carrillo represented in the first generation (…) this award sheds light on that generation”.

She recounted the winding path that the honoree boldly took to conquer museums with her abstract work. “By audacity I understand an artist who takes risks and who also succeeds out of temperance. An artist who doesn’t work within limits, she’s cutting her hands. But knowing how to take it with temperance, not just anyone “.

The teacher Irma Palacios removed her mask for a moment and expressed: “with everything I do I think about the look that will finish my painting, because the people who see it move me a lot. Sometimes I have gone to an exhibition of mine to hear the comments and then they tell me: ‘do you understand this?’ ”, She joked before thanking and highlighting the relevance of culture in times like the ones we live in.

Ortiz, in creative fullness

Finally, to detail the invaluable contribution of the teacher Gabriela Ortiz, the person in charge was the violinist and music professor Víctor Barrera García.

“(Ortiz) has displayed one of the most brilliant careers in contemporary music in Mexico. From a very young age, still as a student of Mario Lavista, she began to write works of precocious maturity (…) her work attests to an unprecedented generation of women composers and her international presence is already of the first rank. Her musical language is a synthesis of the avant-garde up to the traditions of Mexican music”, acknowledged Barrera García and stressed that the aforementioned possesses a teaching vocation that distinguishes her as a trainer of generations of brilliant musicians and who, despite her consecration, he is in creative fullness and continues to push the limits of sound.

After accepting the distinction, Maestro Ortiz declared: “composers, when faced with a blank score, is like finding ourselves alone in the middle of the ocean with the uncertainty of losing ourselves in that infinite blue horizon (…) although experience is fundamental In every artistic process, the fear of starting a new work, at least for me, is always present”.

About the inspiration, he pondered, “for most it is such an enigmatic experience that one cannot even be sure of describing it adequately (…) so, where does the musical inspiration come from? The most accurate answer I have is that it is found in life itself and in the intensity with which it is lived”.

And he concluded: “art for me is a living manifestation that observes us, demands of us and shows us the worst and the best of the society to which we belong (…) there is music, our greatest achievement as a species, that miracle mysterious, intrinsically human, which manages to transmute into an infinite space where time, sound and silence manage to unify (…) art will continue to be infinite because we have always needed it, because it is a right and not a privilege”.

Awarded with the Fine Arts Medal:

*In Theater:

• Louise Huertas
• Bertha Hiriart
• Claudio Valdes Kuri
• Ximena Escalante

*In Dance:

• Jorge Dominguez Cerda
• María Antonieta Gutiérrez Casas “La Morris”
• Manuel Hiram

*In Music and Opera:

• Ana Lara
• Ricardo Gallardo
• Alice Torres Garza

*In Literature:

• Sergio Mondragon
• Ignacio Solares
• Marco Antonio Campos
• Sandro Cohen (posthumous)

*In Architecture:

• Oscar Hagerman Mosquera
• Alberto Gonzalez Well

*In Heritage:

• Valeria Prieto Lopez
• Jorge Sanchez Cordero

*In Visual Arts:

• Miriam Kaiser
• Monica Mayer
• Arnaldo Coen

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx