Breathe
By Mara Sepúlveda
Guillermo Sepulveda or "Memo" as his friends called him was a visionary man, a giant in the arts, who before starting his career had his teacher the irreplaceable Ines Amor of the Mexican Art Gallery in Mexico City.
Why enter the art world?
My father told me that when he went to Europe his view of the world and of monetary value changed completely. There was a break in his emotionality when before his eyes there appeared The Mystic Lamb by the Van Eyck brothers, an altarpiece of adoration, the lamb with a living and transparent gaze, the body is trampled and sacrifices its blood while fifteen angels protect it and surround its altar, on its head shines the halo of triumph before the sins of humanity. In front of this work Dad almost fainted, later he told me that he had suffered the Stendhal syndrome and I quote:
Stendhal syndrome can be categorized as a psychosomatic emotion that causes elevated heart rate, happiness, palpitations, incomparable feelings and excitement when the individual is exposed to works of art, especially when they are considered extremely beautiful.
Without further explanation he returned to the country he revered so much and resigned from his job as an economist, he had set an expiration date to the life that did not bring him satisfaction. Despite having had one of the best positions in banking, he preferred to be captain of his own boat and venture into the waves of an untimely ocean, that was how he decided to venture down the path of art.
At first, my paternal grandfather, also named Guillermo, thought that he would dedicate himself to the tlapalerías, yes, to fill the walls of the houses of a solid color; My grandfather had told him that this business did not leave much money to live, however, if he did it well he could get clients and a good life, to everyone's surprise, my father told him that he was going to dedicate himself to having an art gallery when almost nobody in the northern region knew the meaning of what it meant to open a place where you could buy and build a collection, let alone understand that these works would be valued over time at a high price. Dad also paid his price by dedicating himself to art and rowing alone. Mrs. Inés Amor had warned him of the difficulty that the career entailed, she had told him that he would have to give up a life and lead it almost monastically, that he would feel misunderstood by his own artists and very lonely and that besides the career was very demanding and being inside he could not give up, however, with only twenty-eight years it turned out that Dad had the right mettle to resist the ten times that Inés did not receive him in her office, having to return to Monterrey empty-handed but not crestfallen; On the eleventh time, Mrs. Inés received him while he was in Mexico, asking him these clarifications and a single question : "Answer me," she said sternly, "Who is the better artist: Diego, Orozco or Siqueiros? "Dad took the answer to his grave but I understand that there they coincided and then Amor said with all certainty " You will be the one to follow me, just don't disappoint me and above all don't disappoint art which is above any other love". That was how my dad counted his savings and saw that he could open his own space for three years before going out of business.
The Miró Gallery was born in 1972, "in a small place next to the Ambassador Hotel, that's how it started", by then it had seven artists from Monterrey, some of whom have always been loyal to the gallery: Arturo Marty and his wife Sylvia Ordoñez, exhibiting her for the first time along with Julio Galán (indispensable figure in the career of Miró later Arte Actual Mexicano) with only 18 years old and he 19, dad was the first who stamped in Monterrey artists aesthetic values and in turn economic, from there with fifty-two years of career was decorated by the world.
Ars Longa Vita Brevis!
*Mara Sepúlveda studied Humanistic and Social Studies at the University of Monterrey (UdeM), for more than eight years she has written the art essays for her father's gallery now called Arte Actual Mexicano Guillermo Sepúlveda and has written two books: La teoría de mis voces and Julio Galán: One Way Ticket.
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