Francisco Sanchis Cortés 
“Music for an exhibition”, at Silos Monastery"

 
“It is hard to meet two passions in a great event, like the one Francisco Sanchis Cortés presents at Silos Monastery. I refer to painting and music.

Santo Domingo de Silos’ long musical tradition is worldwide known thanks to Gregorian chant, with which even today monks address to God and pray in one of the most famous Benedictine abbey in Spain.

Not as well known as the rest of the building is, perhaps, its Romanesque Hall, which is an exhibition room used by Silos Monastery and part of the former Medieval Museum. That makes it therefore possible to combine both arts.
Rhythm, harmony and colour are essential features that could be considered part of both artistic subjects with no distinction. Painting and music, vehicles to our understanding of the beginning and the end of everything.

It is possible a clear boundary between music and painting too, one smoothed by the delicate compositions and chromatism oozing from Francisco’s works. Pictures brought to life, creating poetic points of view in terms of narrative and pictorial language by means of, so to speak, plays on lights.

Pythagoras and Aristotle linked these two different concepts as they discussed about colour and sound harmony and their correlations with smells and colours. And that very thing, so simple –I prefer not to say easy, because, it is not precisely easy-, is what we see in every displayed work, until recognizing the soul itself, painting as well.

Francisco Sanchis Cortés finally blends soul, colour and music, what turns all his work a musical metaphor, soaring up to the spiritual sphere in arts and, indeed, no better place to show such a work than the Silos Monastery comes to my mind.
Each painting has its own music, what is a sign of an extraordinary sensibility handled by a gifted painter possessing a major creativity. Such things are key to his job and his dedication to sensitive and charitable causes and works, run by institutions like the Church.

Because what he achieves with his paintings is to awake a audible reference. His plastic elements make us inevitably generate a melody, a series of hues and chords conducted by his brushes and colours, by means of wonderful shapes and silhouettes.

Few painters have found in musical language an exact description to their coloured  pictures, specially those who seek to create a painting with soul and life of their own. Pictures where suddenly the magic of music arise.
 

And among them, Francisco Sanchis Cortés succeeds on turning his pictures into music in our memory, something hard to forget on account of such a pleasant fusion and the pleasure of tasting melodies and colours”.
 

José Gabriel Astudillo López
Chairman
Spanish Association of Painters and Sculptors