Introducing Leopoldo Cuspinera Madrigal
Leopoldo Cusinera Madrigal focuses on a dynamic relationship between landscape and memory, primarily of his home country of Mexico, of Europe, and of his current home in the U.S. Madrigal explains, “In this way, I give the landscape back what it has given me and what I need to remember.”
The artist: My paintings function as memorial artifacts. In some way, they show veiled and unveiled segments of reality or aspects of life: fascinating, mysterious, complex and sometimes also dramatic. These segments permit me to observe details which otherwise would be lost in the immensity. Because of the nature of the technique used, the form emerges from the material itself: water and vegetable fibers. The technique is based on ancient paper fabrication: the Japanese Washi and the Mexican Papel Amate. I have transformed these techniques by adding resins and other materials such as recycled paper pulp, oils, chalk, charcoal, gold, silver, and bronze.
Madrigal’s paintings have been created in an intuitive way, with an underlying, imaginary structure that supports them, revealing logic in the resulting forms. The structure follows a movement that he describes this way:
For each descending line there is a corresponding ascending line.
Light returns us to the Divine Light.
Human beings reach out to that which is immaterial by means of that which is material.
Top: Desierto 2 (diptych), 2016, mixed media, 8.5×46.5″ (each panel)
Middle: Silence in the Neighbourhood (triptych), 2011, mixed media, 27.25×27.25″ each panel
Bottom: White Veil, 2014, mixed media, 12×47.5″