Art & Chocolate at Casa Cortés
                                    

"Shock & Awe"
by Puerto Rican artist José Morales

Chocolate. Art. On their own, each promises a distinctive sensorial delight. Combine the two and you have a terrific new gallery in San Juan: Casa Cortés.

Casa Cortés holds the private collection of chocolatier Ignacio Cortés Gelpi. This
is not the first time it has been on public display. A few years ago Cortés celebrated the 70th anniversary of his company, Empresas Chocolate Cortés, by lending the collection to the Caguas Art Museum. The exhibit was such a success that he and his wife, with encouragement from different people, including artist Antonio Martorell, decided they ought to share their art with the public on a more permanent basis. And given that chocolate is the family business, why not throw in chocolate into the mix as well?

"Geometry"
Omar Rayo, Colombia

The answer was to transform a three-story building on San Francisco Street, in old San Juan, into a combination choco-bar and art space. The choco-bar, still under construction, occupies the ground floor while the second and third floor are devoted to art.

The hip design of the building's interior, conceived by local architect Evelio Pina, creates a sophisticated background for what is a very exciting, high-grade collection. The works on display, 58 paintings by 51 artists from the Caribbean and Latin America, are but a small part of a larger collection that encompasses paintings, watercolors, drawings, photography, videos, collage, assemblages, boxes, sculptures, ceramics, African tribal art and anthropological pieces. Cortés started collecting as the age of 18. He describes buying art as falling in love. In choosing a piece, "There is a basic, essential element," he said in an interview quoted in the show catalog. "It is when I stand for the first time in front of a piece and immediately some alchemy occurs, it's love at first sight."

"Dialogue 2"
Alexandre Arrechea, Cuba

There are so many good pieces on display that one can easily understand how an art lover could get carried away and keep buying art. The works resonate with humor, pathos, irony,
nostalgia, political awareness. There is sex, and wit, and craft. As you progress from one work of art to another, you get the sense of lively imaginations at play in the fields of color. Two small paintings by Haitian artists stand out amid their more contemporary company: one is an intriguing surrealist night scene from 1965 titled "A Big Meeting with the King of the Night" by Edger Jean Baptiste, and the other, "Bathers at the Stream" by Castera Bazile, is a charming and unusual take on the common painterly theme of women bathing, except that in this case the artist tweaked things a bit: he shows a woman peaking behind a tree at a group of men happily frolicking in the water during a break from work. It was painted in 1951.

Some of the stronger pieces in the collection include the magnificent black and white "Geometry" by Omar Rayo; José Morales' "Shock & Awe," an explosion of big and small dots whose bright colorfulness belies the irony that all those dots are meant to portray bombs exploding in Iraq; "Fantasmas (Ghosts)," by Cuban artist Alexis Leyva Machado, a powerful evocation of the Cuban sea exodus in a subdued palette for maximum effect; the beautiful pointillistic aerial view of a city ("A walk in your city") painted by Gustavo Acosta; Rafael Ferrer's "The Red Bandana," a big, sensual image of two women wading in ocean water that seems in perpetual flux; and "Sighting Series," by Jorge Lopéz Pardo, a large, magnificent drawing on canvas that portrays a solitary house that seem to offer no protection against the surrounding dark world and, in fact, seems to be in the process of unraveling.

"Who Are You?"
 Iván Girona, Puerto Rico

Casa Cortés is located at 210 Calle San Francisco, one block away from Plaza de Armas. It is open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no admission charge. Director/ administrator Adelisa Gonzalez-Lugo said that the gallery is available for private functions. For more information, call 787.523.4642.




On Saturday, Casa Cortés will host a guided tour by Antonio Martorell. It starts at 2 p.m.

 ☛A SIMPLE TIP


For those of you who like to bathe

in a tub, this simple advice from Sarah
Busco, founder of Earth Tu Face organic
beauty products: Fill a muslin bag with
oatmeal and infuse in bath water until
the water turns milky.

Says Busco: "It makes your skin soft
and smooth. Also, baking soda. It can be
used for so many beauty tips -- you can
even wash your hair with it."

Photography by Juliette Blasor

Silence and feeling alone can frighten and liberate. It gives
you the space to think and feel but you want to think that there
is the possibility that someone might interrupt you without
it actually happening. When there's no chance of the
solitude being broken, the being alone is of a heavier weight.

Bill Santiago

Copyright ©2013 Lorraine Blasor All Rights Reserved☂