LIBRO - CATÁLOGO HAITZ DE DIEGO

Painting as testimony: OLYMPIANS COLLECTIONS In sport, as in art, and in general, as in all facets of life, some of the best lessons are drawn from mistakes. Life is a competition, essentially with oneself, and overcoming the different stages involves effort and overcoming, facing and humbly accepting the results, even the most unexpected ones, in an exercise of self-motivation and resilience. Perhaps this is the reason why Haitz dedicates a small but interesting series to elite sport, fo- cusing on some of the scenes that most caught his attention during the Olympic Games in Bar- celona in 1992. The analogies are many. Talent comes into play, hand in hand with effort; inspi - ration, hand in hand with confidence in oneself and one’s potential. It is the continuous day-to- day work, the discouragement, the hope, the fear, the passion, which allows us to advance, to grow, to improve. Reaching the goal is only the logical consequence of the above. Through two forms of expression as apparently disparate as sport and art, the human being reaches a higher level, both in terms of commitment and enthusiasm. It is a communion between spiritual and corporeal cul- ture. The parallelism between the two disciplines was particularly well reflected in the very nature of the Olympic Games in their original concep- tion. Classical artists, fascinated by the harmony and artistic perfection of the body in movement, depicted athletes in poses more suited to exhi- bition than competition, something that changed radically when elite sport became a mass spec- tacle, reaching a level of prestige never seen be- fore. It is then that art once again turned to the representation, as aesthetic as it was dramatic, of the figure of the modern athlete transformed into a new gladiator. Haitz’s vision in this sense takes on special in- terest given his passion for sport, something he leaves latent in his works, focused on that precise moment when both the athlete and the artist man- age to go beyond the mere technical perfection that their craft and preparation allows them, to enter a higher, more aesthetic, more fascinating territory. And therein lies the convergence. That’s where they rub up against each other. This may be so because both, once they have risen above the mundane, fly over scenarios more typical of illusionism and that mortal yearning to break the mould, to reach the unreachable and access a piece of eternity.