The Quiet Magician: the art of Cristóbal Hoare
by Guy Arthur Simpson, 2001 Our dear friend, Cris Hoare, died in January 2021, 20 years after the publication of this article
Cristobal Hoare
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In Andalucia’s high mountains, in a small, old village, and in the oldest, deepest, least accessible quarter of that, lives an English painter who has been quietly and faithfully producing some of the most magical work to come out of Andalucia in living memory.
The romantic is such a forgotten figure, so unmodern, that it is hard to find a surviving specimen of the species. But here, unnoticed by fame or fortune, Cristóbal Hoare has been making the survival of art and an art of survival his business for the past thirty years. |
To find him, one has to venture to an old and remote corner of Granada: to La Alpujarra, where eagles soar and wild boar bulldoze the scrub, where the Poqueira river thunders in the gorge way below and a small, proud village stands out in the high reaches against the often snowy backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Capileira village, La Alpujarra, by Cristobal Hoare
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Capileira descends into the Poqueira Gorge at the Devil's Cleft
Capileira is the second highest village in Spain. To enter its maze of streets, built topsy-turvy down the slopes of the ravine, is to wander into a dream. The Berber architecture of the flat-roofed houses, each sprouting its own particular chimney, reminds the visitor that La Alpujarra was the last refuge of the Moors of Al Andalus, and indeed the village is a mirror image of Chaouen in the Morrocan Rif Mountains, which can be spied from these heights across a distant, shining Mediterranean Sea.
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Cris and his American wife, Jackie, came to La Alpujarra in 1976. It was easy enough back then to get by on precious little: and little was what they had, and so they stayed. This was decades before this Andalucian mountain area was discovered by people fleeing England, “driving over lemons” to holiday or settle in the peaceful, sun-blessed little world, high up and far away from madding crowds.
The street follows her a respectful distance, folding her footsteps into purple mysteries
The Alpujarra of the 1970s was one of the country’s poorest and most forgotten spots. Until 1956 there had been no mains electricity and people got by as they traditionally had, on subsistence farming and livestock. Even today, many families grow their own vegetables and make their own wine; some sacrifice pigs fed on scraps, turning them into sausages and ham to last out the year. Rural tourism in the 1990s brought a boom to an area that now has remarkably good facilities to offer to the visitor, yet many houses remain as austere and unadorned as the Hoare home and studio, integrated into a similarly simple lifestyle that they have somehow made sustainable.
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Life in La Alpujarra: an interview
Cris and Jackie talk here about their life in a remote corner of Spain, and we consider the art of an unassuming magician.
Jackie Hoare: It was 1976. We were living in Yorkshire, in the middle of nowhere down the Pennine Way. We were with a bunch of people doing leather work. A contact doing the same work in Bubión [Capileira’s neighbouring village 2 km down the gorge] knew of Cris, and that he was learning flamenco guitar, so suggested he come out to work and play flamenco in the land of its birth. I said yes, because I didn’t want to spend another winter in Yorkshire.
Cristobal Hoare: So they invited us to spend the winter in Bubión. When we arrived, of the five people running the workshop, there was nobody there. We had 1,000 pesetas [6 euros]. The Love family put us up. We went to the old Mesón Poqueira [2 km up the road in Capileira, over the road from the not much newer building still serving meals and drinks there today] for a lunch of egg and chips and blew the 1,000 pesetas.
CH After which we started working for the leather workshop. In return, we had everything paid for — but no money. We put in long hours. It was Gurdjieffian, idealistic, New Age, egoistic... But we were well taken care of. We made some quality stuff and went round the bars with our bags, leaving them there and going back to pick up the sales money.
JH Trevélez was always good.
CH We were also getting orders from Granada. Packing the merchandise into boxes and sending it off on the Alsina bus. Hand-thonged, tooled leather bags. The Alsina brought everything in like a stagecoach. It would dump the mail on the steps of the Teide. We used it for our leather supplies. The Teide had the first black-and-white TV. The men would go in and watch while the women stood outside with the children, looking through the window. In the Alpujarra in the 70s, the streets were still made of clay, earth. There were only two or three cars. One was the doctor’s. A newcomer stood out a lot. People would peer out of their window at you. They’d pull their children in off the streets and close the door. It sounds like something out of a story, but it was a bit like that.
JH We learned a lot. We worked hard, played hard, went to all the fiestas.
CH It was a small commune type of a company. We shared meals and a TV together in the same house, watching Tip y Col [a kind of Spanish Morecambe and Wise]. Not that we understood them. After 30 years we still don’t get the jokes.
JH Circumstances meant that we were poor as church mice and we could live here on very little. We appreciate the support that people have given us since we’ve been here. We’re not free beings. We can’t just decide, oh, I’d like to go live there for a while, because we don’t have the means.
CH Painting took over for me around 1990, when we had already come to Capileira. I paint what’s around me and I’m very lucky because so much around me is beautiful. But I might pick up an image from the TV or a magazine that’s totally unrelated, but which sparks off an idea. For me, La Alpujarra is a place you can still have peace and tranquillity, but everything you need is close to hand. Capileira, especially, is still a community. The mountains are majestic and they show you many faces. I never tire of looking at them. And mountain weather has a flavour no other weather has.
JH People live longer here. I’ve met women 15 years older than me who look younger. For me the alpujarreños are special.
CH I live in La Alpujarra because I like the lifestyle and the people and the place and because I can live here. I use images that I see daily around me. I’d be an artist if I was elsewhere, but I feel quite happy in the mountains. We’re here by circumstance, but if we could leave now, we wouldn’t.
Jackie Hoare: It was 1976. We were living in Yorkshire, in the middle of nowhere down the Pennine Way. We were with a bunch of people doing leather work. A contact doing the same work in Bubión [Capileira’s neighbouring village 2 km down the gorge] knew of Cris, and that he was learning flamenco guitar, so suggested he come out to work and play flamenco in the land of its birth. I said yes, because I didn’t want to spend another winter in Yorkshire.
Cristobal Hoare: So they invited us to spend the winter in Bubión. When we arrived, of the five people running the workshop, there was nobody there. We had 1,000 pesetas [6 euros]. The Love family put us up. We went to the old Mesón Poqueira [2 km up the road in Capileira, over the road from the not much newer building still serving meals and drinks there today] for a lunch of egg and chips and blew the 1,000 pesetas.
CH After which we started working for the leather workshop. In return, we had everything paid for — but no money. We put in long hours. It was Gurdjieffian, idealistic, New Age, egoistic... But we were well taken care of. We made some quality stuff and went round the bars with our bags, leaving them there and going back to pick up the sales money.
JH Trevélez was always good.
CH We were also getting orders from Granada. Packing the merchandise into boxes and sending it off on the Alsina bus. Hand-thonged, tooled leather bags. The Alsina brought everything in like a stagecoach. It would dump the mail on the steps of the Teide. We used it for our leather supplies. The Teide had the first black-and-white TV. The men would go in and watch while the women stood outside with the children, looking through the window. In the Alpujarra in the 70s, the streets were still made of clay, earth. There were only two or three cars. One was the doctor’s. A newcomer stood out a lot. People would peer out of their window at you. They’d pull their children in off the streets and close the door. It sounds like something out of a story, but it was a bit like that.
JH We learned a lot. We worked hard, played hard, went to all the fiestas.
CH It was a small commune type of a company. We shared meals and a TV together in the same house, watching Tip y Col [a kind of Spanish Morecambe and Wise]. Not that we understood them. After 30 years we still don’t get the jokes.
JH Circumstances meant that we were poor as church mice and we could live here on very little. We appreciate the support that people have given us since we’ve been here. We’re not free beings. We can’t just decide, oh, I’d like to go live there for a while, because we don’t have the means.
CH Painting took over for me around 1990, when we had already come to Capileira. I paint what’s around me and I’m very lucky because so much around me is beautiful. But I might pick up an image from the TV or a magazine that’s totally unrelated, but which sparks off an idea. For me, La Alpujarra is a place you can still have peace and tranquillity, but everything you need is close to hand. Capileira, especially, is still a community. The mountains are majestic and they show you many faces. I never tire of looking at them. And mountain weather has a flavour no other weather has.
JH People live longer here. I’ve met women 15 years older than me who look younger. For me the alpujarreños are special.
CH I live in La Alpujarra because I like the lifestyle and the people and the place and because I can live here. I use images that I see daily around me. I’d be an artist if I was elsewhere, but I feel quite happy in the mountains. We’re here by circumstance, but if we could leave now, we wouldn’t.
Cris's paintings recreate the world he inhabits, often expressing a vision of exuberant or questioning abstraction.
The annual show in Capileira is a popular chance to see living examples of Cris Hoare’s talent, together with paintings by Spanish artists Paco Bravo and Jaime Avilés, while other exhibits introduce several other special people of the locality and their work, whether baker, shepherd, leather craftsman, iron forger or teacher.
These neighbours are often to be found in recognizable silhouettes in Cris Hoare’s timeless landscapes:
These neighbours are often to be found in recognizable silhouettes in Cris Hoare’s timeless landscapes:
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As you will see in the paintings that follow, there is no ordinary, lacklustre piece. Each painting is an event and a celebration of some kind. Informing Cris’s vision is a waking magic, luring him to capture it and lay it down with palate knife and fresh colour. Like some ancient alchemist, fascinated by and devoted to his science, he has painted scene after local scene to become the finest artist of La Alpujarra, its high mountain villages, country life and people.
"Quotes are by the artist
Capileira
"Colour is a world in itself. Colour is magic. It’s alchemy.
"Oil has something that’s irreplaceable. I’ve tried other techniques and always come back to it.
"Oil gives colour, brilliance of colour. And that’s everything really. Colour for me is all-important.
"The placing within the rectangle is of supreme importance.
Bubión & Pampaneira
Late afternoon heat thickens the atmosphere in Bubión
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Pampaneira's hydroelectric generator station — or have the villagers set a fire around Dracula’s castle?
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"I paint to express what I see in things
La Tahá de Pitres
A muleteer heads for Atalbéitar village: original photo
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Rendered by Cris Hoare with brilliant foliage -- and a dog for company
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Form and vision
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"It’s all very much down to chance: controlled chance
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The ancient philosopher
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Cristobal Hoare
Born Colchester, England, 1948. Died Granada, Spain, 2021. Studied at Colchester School of Art from 1964-1966 before winning Diploma in Fine Art at St Martin’s School of Art, London, in 1969. He has lived in the Alpujarra (Granada, Spain) since 1976. Principal media: oil and watercolour. Exhibitions 1988 Vejer de la Frontera (Cadiz) 1990-present: Galleries of DEBLA, Alpujarra 1996 “Under different skies,” Copenhagen, Denmark 2002 “British Artists of the 20th Century in Granada,” Centro Cultural Gran Capitán, Granada 2004-2020: Annual exhibitions with “Colorearte” group, Capileira |
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