Chicago painter, patron of Lepe

The painter Enrique Romero Santana (Lepe, 75 years old) remembers that wise man who does not change Paris for his village to whom Joaquín Sabina sings.

The great metropolis in this case is Chicago, the third most populous city in the United States, where Santana has developed a pictorial activity that for three decades has placed him as one of the main exponents of realism in the Spanish art scene.

And his village, with the permission of this municipality of 28,000 inhabitants, is Lepe, a coastal town in the province of Huelva of great prosperity thanks to the cultivation of strawberries, tourism scattered along its 24 kilometers of Atlantic beaches and fishing, but where never an art gallery had been opened.

If his long stay in Chicago is reflected in a collection of paintings of geometric beauty in which industrial architecture, colossal skyscrapers and overwhelming concrete landscapes follow one another;

de Lepe, by contrast, has transferred to his palette poetic and powerful seascapes or beaches in their different transits of light, embodied in imposing large-format paintings, which also define his work.

And that is how it will continue to be from now on, because Santana, as he himself admits, only paints what surrounds him.

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And at this moment, the inspiring environment is once again Lepe, where he left at the age of 14 and where he has returned in 2020, “pushed by the pandemic”.

Together with his partner, the North American publicist John Holland, he has been taking steps on that journey of no return until finally establishing himself in his hometown.

First with a stopover in Madrid for two years, later on La Antilla beach as a refuge in times of confinement, and since this summer, in the historic center of Lepe, where the couple has raised, with their personal assets and a muscle emotional, economic and professional of a strictly private nature, the John Holland gallery, a non-profit project "that comes to meet a public obligation: Lepe is an economic and social power, but it has never had a House of Culture", he reflects Santana.

Enrique and John receive EL PAÍS in the renovated stately home with which they intend to remedy this cultural anomaly on the Huelva coast.

A light enters through its polychrome windows that envelops the atmosphere of a conventual atmosphere, an intimacy that has something of an Andalusian patio and also of a minimalist North American art gallery.

The building is a beautiful example of civil works from the first decade of the 20th century and it opened its doors in August as “a perfect wrapper for the project”, confesses the painter.

The initiative is ambitious: it has the alliance of some of the most important galleries in Madrid and aims to become a catalyst for this landscape of sea and greenhouses, a "place of pilgrimage" for all those who believe in culture and art as development engine: “From Lepe to the rest of the world”,

Even so, "the John Holland gallery is only part of the project that we have in mind within the Asociación Cultural Pintor Santana, which we want to fulfill a didactic and pedagogical function in an environment that is in great need of training in the plastic arts", confirms the painter from Huelva, who walks with Holland through the palace house evoking his passion for architecture and spaces full of symbology.

The artist, who lived in the famous suburb of Chicago, Oak Park, next to the house of the writer Ernest Hemingway and who has portrayed the most famous buildings of Mies van der Rohe in the American city, walks with the same emotion inside of what is known as the house of the notary of Lepe.

“It is the only example of

in the province”, explains the artist.

The group show

curated by the Ansorena gallery and auction house in Madrid, opened the new center's program in August.

“Our intention is to work every two months with a different gallery in Madrid and for them to be the curators of the exhibitions.

We have started with realistic painting, on a journey that begins here but will stop at other movements until we reach abstraction”, specifies Holland, who does not hide his enthusiasm.

"We can do a lot of fun things."

Among them, there is an exchange project with the Art Institute of Chicago to bring scholarship artists to Lepe during the summer "and let them learn to paint the sea," explains Holland;

or the program for young international chefs who combine art and gastronomy.

For now, the next step will be the exhibition already scheduled for the fall in collaboration with the gallery My name's Lolita Art, also established in the Spanish capital, on surrealism “or magical realism painters”, as Santana likes to say.

Enrique Romero Santana, seated, next to John Holland.

PACO BRIDGES

Likewise, the work of the artist from Huelva will be a constant in the gallery, such as the complete series

, made in 2004 and exhibited in the convent of Santa Inés in Seville under the curatorship of Fernando Castro Flórez, which he never wanted to sell;

or the last pictures painted in Chicago.

“As I am a local artist, who knows if now I will dedicate myself to painting the rooftops of Lepe”, he predicts from the viewpoint of the notary's house, while looking out over a sleepy town that is beginning to awaken to art.

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