Arco wouldn’t be Arco without its dose of controversy, the scandalous works that attract all the attention and are the talk of the corridors to a marabunta of rich collectors in search of exciting and dangerous art. Manuel has reappeared in this edition, a homoerotic sculpture by Rodrigo that shocked the fair in 1983 and is now back as the great gay icon of Spanish art. A monument to unrequited homosexual love.
“The director at the time, Juana de Aizpuru, who was very modern and very much her own, sent libels to my gallerist [Fefa Seiquier] to remove that man. She said that it did not let her sleep. But the stand was always full”, recalls the artist. The cartoonist from Tangier depicted himself embracing the naked body of his platonic love, a young man he had fallen in love with in a swimming pool. The two of them melt into one body, the heart lit up in red galloping in sync with her desire. “It’s the first queer work of Spanish art”, points out gallerist José de la Mano, who in addition to Rodrigo has recovered other queer artists from the transition, such as Costus, Juan Hidalgo or Carlos Forns Bada.
Rodrigo took six years to shape Manuel, before telling the story in installments in La Luna de Madrid, the magazine of the movement founded by Borja Casani, and later turning it into a cult comic. The most beautiful love story ever consummated. Rodrigo, artistic name of Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester, has always kept it at the foot of his bed, with the exception of the six years it was owned by the American collector and adviser to the Tate who bought it when he saw it at the fair . He took her to London and then to New York, where she died of AIDS. Her boyfriend and heir wanted to return it to the author, but he stayed in Barajas for a few months, waiting for someone to pay the 600,000 pesetas that cost the customs fees. Rodrigo, who did not have the money, told the warehouse manager his story and he, moved, allowed him to take it away. Now it is for sale again for 80,000 euros.
“I have no idea how much it could be worth. How can you match your emotion to the market? It is clear that I have to pay a roof and I have to eat! But I’m happy with a sandwich like the one I just bought on the subway, for 2.30 euros,” explains Rodrigo. He is anxious to see what will happen these days at the fair, but he hopes to have as much fun there as in 1983. housewives who scrubbed his package every morning. ‘We left it there like silver’, they told me”. But the best “was a very old lady painted like a parrot who came every afternoon with a folding chair and said: ‘If only Federico saw it!’ And I asked my gallerist, Fefa: ‘But what is this? Do they come from insane asylums or what?’ And she told me: ‘No, she is Maruja Mallo and Federico is García Lorca'”.
This image today does not pass the filter of internet censorship.
