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Sculptures in bronze: gossipers in Camaguey for a long time

[...] Stop before the pieces of Martha Jimenez, who ennoble everything, because beauty is the only thing that guarantees the human condition. Miguel Barnet.

The fat mulattoes of Martha Jimenez already have the guarantee for the durable gossip in their space of the Place of the Carmen. Now they are the first bronze sculptures of that ensemble. Because of their metallic bearing are the talk of the neighborhood and those who knew them as marmolina, because although its author assures that they are the same figures, they look different since two Friday.

"Oh, but they put them in gold!" Exclaimed a child on the day of the emplacement. The change delayed a little, according to eyewitnesses. They changed the body practically without moving of the place, but the thing invisible to the spectator reaches more than half a year of work in the workshop, to obtain a mold of plaster with the essence of each portrait.

The old and expensive dream of bringing to a lasting material that popular and representative work of the city, was viable by the Office of the Historian of the City of Camaguey and the Caguayo Foundation. During the founding in Santiago de Cuba, there they told Martha that they had not had in their hands a project of such magnitude by the number of sculptures - seven - with the accessories of benches and vessels.

Gossipers represent the everyday scene of gossiping. The trio of gossipers with the four stools topped the list. The fidelity to the concept is unquestionable. The pieces gained greater visibility of its details and another more human air. The line of customs has been one of the great successes of the artist, who recognizes that her creation there finds a great flight and unfathomable reasons of pleasure, for national and international acceptance.

Martha estimates that by the middle of 2013 the whole ensemble of Plaza del Carmen will be completed. That priority for her demands enormous efforts, because modeling is a personal matter that she does alone. In the foundry workshop is already the water-carrier with the wheelbarrow, known as Mata'o. There is missing the plaster version of the couple of lovers and the reader of the newspaper.

These pieces will be the greatest of Martha, but not the only ones in bronze. In its repertoire, it emphasizes the tally with the relief of Martha Abreu, at the homonymous primary school; also, the sculpture of a martyr and works of small format. Besides, for that definitive material, she conceived Vicentina de la Torre with a natural size of 1.54 meters and her gesture when calling the students for the class. This is a Cuban debt with that dancer and teacher who sowed in many the seed of dance.

Meanwhile, the woman of San German, in Holguin, makes more noticeable the monumental proposal for which she received the UNESCO Prize for urban renewal, a decade ago, and that today has as added value of the location in the segment proclaimed Cultural Heritage Of Humanity. She continues giving to Camaguey, the city where she formed her family and she has done the work with industriousness.

Its voluptuous black women, with elongated eyes, reminiscent of the Aboriginal, remain on cobblestones, surrounded by nineteenth-century buildings in the square with the only church with two towers of the city, with an empty stool to engage the visitor in the gossiping. From that stamp of daily life they feed a gossip that certainly does not question the Camagueyan spirit of Martha Jimenez.


By: Yanetsy Leon Gonzalez.Fuente: Adelante Digital
October 2012.