The premature death of Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre (1887-1938), known simply as Nestor, did not prevent him from leaving behind an important legacy as a painter, set designer and figurine inserted in European symbolism and modernism. “He is an artist who breaks the types,” explains Juan Vicente Aliaga, commissioner of the exhibition Néstor reunitedthe first dedicated to the artist in Madrid in more than 100 years, which opens on May 14 at the Reina Sofía Museum.
“He did what he wanted. And, in addition, he had a really extreme audacity when showing homosexual desire, especially if we take into account the time he lived.” But while Nestor receives his tribute in Madrid, his house in his hometown has been almost seven years closed, suffering from moisture, accessibility and temperature problems, in addition to the aging of materials. His biggest problem, however, is the slowness of the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Insular Cabildo: both administrations – to be controlled both by the PSOE and Nueva Canarias, a nationalist party – it took seven years to tender the works, which in December were deserted because the economic offer was very low. “It is a cultural catastrophe,” summarizes the opposition of the PP in the Consistory.
Nestor traveled by movements such as modernism, decadentism and symbolism. “But it was his a symbolism that corresponded to the one in vogue in Europe, especially in France or in Belgium. He was going to his own rhythm, without following the slogans of the time,” says Aliaga. During his short life he developed a strongly personal work, in which he highlights his attraction for androgynous figures, with a sensuality and eroticism that caused a stir in the most conservative moral standards of his time. Néstor had the opportunity to travel to London, Paris and Brussels, and living in Barcelona and Madrid, where he began with Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, Federico García Lorca or a Salvador Dalí who, years later, would help rescue his work from oblivion.
Among his best known works are the Atlantic poem and the Earth’s poema project dedicated to the elements, which left unfinished due to his death. These two series of great paintings collect their aesthetic ideas on the fusion of male and female bodies in compositions that integrate various elements of the Canary Islands fauna and fantasy. “He is a really fantastic artist, who offers a trajectory as valuable as little known outside the islands,” Aliaga completes.
His name is intimately linked to that of his brother, the architect and urbanist Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre (1894-1980), author of the headquarters of the Cabildo or the current hotel Santa Catalina. Representative of Canarian rationalism, of his mind – and of collaboration with Nestor – left a good part of the buildings and houses that define the city and the island. Together they recreated, in turn, an architecture neocanariawhich is observed in the Parador de Tejeda and in the Canarian town, an architectural complex completed in 1956. This last project includes a place, local craft stores, a hermitage, a restaurant-bodegón and the museum dedicated to Nestor, open that same year. The whole was named well of cultural interest with a category of monument by the Canarian government in 2013.
The City Council (governed by PSOE, Nueva Canarias and Podemos) closed the – “temporarily” museum, as stated then – in December 2017. The goal was to carry out a remodeling of the entire complex (not only the museum, but also the stores, the square and the hermitage), although there were already moisture in the roofs, which put the pieces at risk. The works of the Bodegón and the Hermitage have already concluded. The museum has run worse luck. The Insular Commission of Historical Heritage of the Cabildo rejected in 2020 the first project sent by the City Council – to be approved because it is a BIC. According to the president of the Cabildo, Antonio Morales (Nueva Canarias), it was not a “serious, rigorous and complete project,” he explained to the media. “It ended up discarding by disparities with the Cabildo de Gran Canaria,” they limit to explain sources from the City Council. In September 2022, the Storm Hermine aggravated the situation of the property and forced the director of the center, Daniel Montesdeoca, one of the world’s largest experts in the artist’s work, to go one night to shrink water with her own hands.
In January 2023, the City Council sent to the Board of Trustees a new basic project that, this time, received the approval – if subject to conditions. The work still took more than a year and a half to get out of tender. The works included an improvement in the accessibility of the building through ramps and the installation of an elevator, the conditioning of the carpentry and the roof, the renewal of the facilities or the creation of new telecommunications, ventilation and air conditioning services. All with a period of 24 months and for 3.5 million euros charged to the Canary Islands Development Funds (FDCAN). In January, however, the local corporation reported that the contest had been deserted due to lack of interest from companies. The City Council has explained to this newspaper that the rehabilitation plan has been reviewed and the budget has been updated up to 4.2 million. Currently, the file for its new tender is processed.
“Neither this is any installation, nor Néstor is any artist, nor is Miguel Martín any architect,” denounces, meanwhile, Gustavo Sánchez, councilor in the opposition, of the PP. “The museum will be condemned to be closed at least for ten years due to the lack of understanding between the City Council and the Cabildo. And that are both of the same political sign.”
Montesdeoca has refused to comment on the situation of the property. Recently, however, he criticized the SER chain that “never” has endowed the museum “with an infrastructure, or the necessary personnel to get ahead.” “His mouth is filled with Nestor, but we have never taken care of his figure, nor his legacy, nor his ideal for this city.” And sentence: “Debt with Nestor is not only political, but also of society.”
