The experimental painter and filmmaker José Antonio Sistiaga (Sant Sebastià, 1932) died on June 25, aged 91. Between 1968 and 1970, he made a feature film painted directly on celluloid that today is still an inescapable reference on a global scale. At a time when the Basque language was banned by Franco’s dictatorship, he evaded censorship and titled the hypnotic silent feature in a non-existent language, but with obvious Basque resonances: “ …ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren …”. The use of small initials and ellipsis already announced the extraordinary character to any possible viewer. It was a mobile and changing painting in 35 millimeter format, projectable on a large screen and lasting 75 minutes, composed of 108,000 small successive paintings, in perpetual flight, at a speed of 24 paintings per second.
The exceptional cinematographic painting is the great masterpiece of the genre. It represents the fullness of an experimental way in which other authors have also worked successfully, such as the Canadian Norman McLaren, the New Zealander Len Lye or the American Stan Brakhage, who are better known internationally than he. At the Reina Sofia museum, Sistiaga is recognized as one of the main Spanish avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century, along with José Val del Omar and the Buñuel-Dalí duo. On this point, at least, two museum directors as different as Manuel Borja-Villel and Juan Manuel Bonet have agreed. However, I believe that Sistiaga should have a more prominent place in the history of international art, as much as Chillida and Oteiza, with whom he formed the Gaur group (1965-1967).
The evocative capacity of his expressionist feature film is based on an extraordinary synthesis of different and complementary visions. It is an abstract and lyrical work, risky and exploratory, capable of using chance to enrich and transcend meaning. It evokes, like a fractal vision, the organic world, at the same time as the cosmic scale. The matter appears in the painting changing like a nature in rapid transformation, and the forms can only be described in the form of a scientific and poetic paradox: an ocean of cracks, a wave-archipelago, a solar or cellular circle, a plot of bubbles, apparitions that die, spectral and concrete spots.
The film …ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren… can be seen as a river of micro and macrocosmic transformations, evoking organic and astronomical landscapes while developing various ways of pictorial expression. In the history of art, it acts as a bridge between abstract expressionist painting and experimental cinema on the more visionary, or even psychedelic side, and constitutes a fully successful synthesis.
The duration and movement characteristic of cinema allowed Sistiaga to turn what he had painted on canvas a few years earlier, in exile in Paris, into a dance of matter and energy. Feature painting not only meant a step beyond what had been achieved in the middle of the 20th century by Mark Tobey and Jackson Pollock, or also by Henri Michaux in his mescaline drawings, but it also anticipated other later contributions, such as the experimental painting of Darío Urzay or the photographs of Manel Esclusa from the series Jardí d’Humus (2006).
Beyond …ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren…, José Antonio Sistiaga would deserve a great retrospective of his painting and cinema. And his biography – with facets such as that of a smuggler – could give rise to a good film of interior and exterior adventures.
Three exhibitions. Until July 30, you can visit Sabine Finkenauer’s exhibition in Palma Dotze (Vilafranca del Penedès). Until August 19, that of Núria Güell at ADN (Barcelona). And, until July 16, the anthology of Santi Moix at Espais Volart.
