Armando Morales (b. 1927)

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Latin American Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints, November 23, 1992, lot 65, illustrated in color
Acquired from the above by the previous owner
Sale: Christie's, New York, Latin American Sale: Evening Session, May 28, 2008, lot 7, illustrated in color
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard, Armando Morales: Peintures, 1990, no. 19, illustrated in color

This painting is essentially in perfect condition. The canvas is unlined and still on its original stretcher. The canvas has relaxed very slightly but is healthy and is supporting the paint nicely. None of the instability that is sometimes evident in Morales's work is evident here and there is no restoration or damage to this piece. This picture should be hung as is. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Born in the remote lakeside city of Granada, the Nicaraguan artist Armando Morales has long made his hometown the principle focus of his artistic inquiry. And, although his quasi-surreal paintings span a vast repertoire of subjects from still lives, corridas or bull fights, to his de Chiricoesque scenes of female bathers, it is his verdant jungle landscapes that have become his signature motif and perhaps the most overt reference to this peripatetic artist's yearning to re-connect to his homeland after years of self-imposed exile. Likewise Morales' landscapes may also be viewed as a conscious desire to insert a specific Latin American context into his work, as the below statement well indicates:

I think that perhaps of all my themes, the jungle is the one that most reflects my roots, my interests in the integrally American-ness of my art. . . . My images of the jungle are linked to the memories I have of trips made to the rain forests of eastern and northern Nicaragua as well as those of my first trip to the Brazilian Amazon. In 1959, I went to Iquitos in Peru and from there traveled in a small boat through the Amazon until I reached Manaus. I will never forget the dense vegetation and aliveness of the green forest.¹

Indeed, the role of memory as a repository or storehouse of images is critical to understanding Morales creative process. Like much of his paintings, Forêt Tropicale was painted abroad, and thus reveals a dual process of recuperation and transformation in which latent histories are rescued and reconfigured into extraordinarily seductive and metaphysical worlds, both real and imagined. Perhaps it is this process that accounts for the inherently enigmatic effects of Morales' jungles which are never entirely realistic, nor fantastical—but rather they hover somewhere in between a perpetual state of knowing and longing. Morales laborious process of building up layers of paint that are alternately scraped away and covered with an opaque varnish of beeswax further imbues paintings such as Forêt Tropicale with a patinated surface that suggest a sense of remoteness and timelessness. Ultimately Morales' lush tropical forests are as much a tribute to his homeland as they are a potent metaphor of the eternal and spiritual bond between nature and humanity. Somewhere amid the deep recesses of the dense foliage and trees an opening emerges in the center like a gravitational force—a subtle invitation to traverse this uncharted territory.

1 Armando Morales as quoted in E. J. Sullivan, "Armando Morales: Southern Visions of the Mind," Arts Magazine, 62:3, November 1987, 65.