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72 73Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2, p. 72-98, 2012. , p. 72-98, 2012.
Duende Art 
José Rodeiro
Editor do períodico Ragazine CC, artista visual do National Endowment for the Arts; Cinta Fellow e pesquisador 
Fulbright. Atualmente, é professor do Departamento de Artes da New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, Estados 
Unidos.
Abstract:
In his 1933 Duende essay, Lorca argues that most art is created via inspiration from the muses, who are obsessed with (or 
by) the past. For Lorca, “muse-inspired” art is created via memories, experiences, preconceptions, or by way of previously 
known things and ideas. According to Lorca, this need for artistic-reminiscence preoccupies Classicism, Academicism, Ro-
manticism, all forms of Geometric-Abstraction, and generally most ART (approximately 90% of all art is of the muses). We find 
the muses lingering behind Lord Byron’s and William Wordsworth’s Romantic idea that, ‘Poetry [“Art”] is “the spontaneous 
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. That is what happens to the duende´s 
art which is the main of this article.
. 
Keywords: duende. art. musas of art. inspiration. moviment of art 
Resumo:
Em seu ensaio Duende 1933, Lorca argumenta que a maioria da arte é criada através de inspiração de musas, que estão 
obcecados com (ou pelo) o passado. Para Lorca, a“musa de inspiração” da arte é criada através de memórias, experiências, 
preconceitos, ou por meio de coisas já conhecidas e ideias. De acordo com Lorca, essa necessidade de artístico-reminiscência 
preocupou o Classicismo, o Academicismo, o Romantismo, e todas as formas de Geometria-Abstração, e, em geral, a maior-
parte da Arte (cerca de 90% de toda a arte pertencem às musas). Nós encontramos as musas remanescentes atrás Lord Byron, 
o romântico, nas ideias de William Wordsworth que em sua“Poetry [“ Arte “] “é “o transbordamento espontâneo de senti-
mentos poderosos: ela tem a sua origem emoção recolhida na tranqüilidade“. Isto é o que ocorre com a arte duende que tem 
seu principal foco neste artigo.
Palavras-chave: duende arte, arte, musas da arte, inspiração, movimento artístico
An IntroductIon to duende theory:
In Federico Garcia-Lorca’s acclaimed essay Play and Theory of the Duende (1933), Duende is defined as one of three incarnations of artistic inspiration, rousing human creativity. In the essay, Lorca identifies three distinct spiritual entities that inspire all human creativity: 1). muses, 2). angels, and 3). the duende. 
As the essay progresses, Lorca defines and compares each of these supernatural art-inducing dynamos. 
 The muses are essentially the nine (9) daughters of Mnemosyne (1-a) (Goddess of Memory), who 
were simultaneously conceived as a result of Zeus’s rape of their mother. All nine are the devoted compa-
nions of their half-brother Apollo (God of Beauty, Light, Poetry, Music, Purity, and the radiant sun) (1-b). 
For approximately 90% of all artists, these nine sisters are the inspirational source of human creativity, 
ingenuity, and art; especially, given that reminiscence (“memory”) is generally the intended subject-matter 
(or theme) of most art and creativity. This widely held view that art replicates or reveals memory(ies) 
is a hypothesis apprehended and corroborated by the aesthetic theories of Wordsworth, Proust, Tolstoy, 
Dewey, Freud, Breton and most leading art theorists, who relate art to experience(s). Moreover, even the 
recent counterargument of Amnesis theory, which has been proposed by Dr. Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz (the 
Bolivian poet and aesthetic theorist) purports that amnesia (“the loss of memory”) is the true-source of 
human artistic creativity; thereby, brilliantly inverting (turning-inside-out) the remembrance/recollection 
aesthetic(s) of Wordsworth, Proust, Tolstoy, Dewey, Freud, Dalí and Breton. 
 With so many renowned devotees (both negative and positive) insisting on a clear connection betwe-
en art and memory/non-memory; and with such a strong (well-argued) philosophical advocacy of a doctrine 
of art as “experience,” “memory,” “reverie,” or “the forgotten,” throughout art history, a universal focus on 
the past for inspiration is generally evident in, e.g., Idealism, Classicism, Academicism, the Grand-Manner, 
Romanticism, Symbolism, Surrealism, as well as all forms of contemporary Geometric-Abstraction, Con-
ceptual Art, Minimal Art, Hard-Edge Art, Text-based Art, Amnesis Art, and generally most ART. The artists 
devoted to the muses [(the daughters of Mnemosyne, the Goddess of Memory(1-a))] are: Apelles, Philoxe-
nos of Eretria, Helen of Egypt, Giotto, Masaccio, Uccello, van der Weyden, early-Michelangelo, Raphael 
(The School of Athens), Holbein the Younger, Poussin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Meissonier, Dame Eli-
zabeth Southerden Thompson (Lady Butler), Rosa Bonheur (Horse Fair), Cezanne, Picasso, Rivera, Grant 
Wood, Barnett Newman, Warhol, Jaspar Johns, Rosenquist, Judy Chicago, Claudio Bravo, Judy Baca, Mark 
Tansey, Komar & Melamid, Maya Lin (The Vietnam Memorial’s polished black-granite list of dead US 
combatants in Southeast Asia), Sandy Skoglund, José Rodeiro’s 9/11 or Kara Walker. These muse(s)-inspi-
red artists create by focusing exclusively on every aspect of memory, i.e., remembered, or historical events, 
and things-of-the-past (historical records, relics, artifacts, objets d’art, allusions-to-art and/or readymades). 
 Occasionally muses are overwhelmed by their Apollonian routine duties (1-b), and they uninten-
tionally forget to inspire, or they (bravely or foolishly) give artists free-reign, thereby permitting artists to 
seek the forgotten (e.g., amnesis lost objects) through unremembered oversight, “omission(s),” or by not 
inspiring; thereby they inadvertently permit artist to access traps, voids, wormholes or lacunae (gaps or lost-
-realms containing, or not-containing, missing things and objects). Hence, by their thoughtless omissions, 
74 75Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
both positive and negative muses indirectly allow all forms of memory (reminiscence, reverie, and recol-
lection) and all forms of forgetfulness (not recalling, overlooking, avoidance, amnesia and/or disregard), 
forgetting lost things, events, persons, memories and objects, etc). Nevertheless, since 90% of artistic 
creative inspiration derives from muses; Lorca (in his Duende essay) argues that all these positive and/or 
negative memory-based approaches to human creativity and art are academic (art historical and scientific) 
distractions or ruses that lead both artists and audiences far away from what is (“in his opinion”) truly su-
blime in art: the duende! 
 Lorca’s harangue against all forms of creative inspiration enthused by muses is matched only by his 
disdain for angelic inspiration’s impact on creativity and the arts. Unlike backward-looking muses, angels 
base their inspiration on the future, because their inimitable form of creative inspiration is generally farsi-
ghted, prophetic, and telepathic; their inspiration presages future-aspiration(s). Angels hover around certain 
childlike, innocent, playful and hyper-imaginative “future-oriented” artists (i.e., Fra Angelico, Fr. Lippi, 
young-Botticelli, da Messina, Cranach the Elder, Murillo, Blake, Turner, Monet, Dufy, Chagall, Matisse, 
Delaunay, Miró, Reverón, Frankenthaler, Elizabeth Murray, Chihuly, Julie Mehretu, Ultra Violet and Salva-
tore Tagliarino, etc., etcetera), carefully guiding them toward the future, as well as salvation. On the other 
hand, the duende eschews both the past (muses) and the future (angels); because the duende’s only concern 
is the here-&-now (“the present”). For Lorca, the duende is “creation made act!”(2.a.)
defInIng the duende:
 The exegesis of the term duende stems from Lorca’s fascination with Gypsy culture. In the es-
say Play and Theory of the Duende (1933), Lorca draws clear-cutdistinctions between Galician (northern 
Spanish) duendes (goblin-gnomes, leprechauns, or “Mr. Nobody”) and the unanticipated yet ever-present 
skeletal duende of southern Spain. As a native of Granada, Lorca was intimately familiar with Andalusian 
gypsy-culture; its aesthetic values, musical dance styles, and mystique. His poems and tragedies were ins-
pired by a powerful Granadaean duende. This southern duende, Lorca describes as an Andalusian specter 
dwelling, “from the rock of Jaen to the shell of Cádiz” (2.b.). Interestingly, both the playful Galic elfin 
duendes and the life-threatening southern Gypsy “Old Kronos” duende are madcap reckless calaveras, who 
rebuke prudence and caution, and insist on risk and daring. The tiny fat Galician northern duende (although 
in some accounts, this odd pixy is described as being slight, lithe, and silver-tawny, shimmering like an ex-
traterrestrial) is merely mischievous, unruly, and has no interest in inspiring art or creativity. On the other 
hand, cloaked in a red mantle, the hot-marrowed bony Andalusian duende is a looming red-skeleton, who 
without ceremony (scythe and hourglass in hand(s)) targets beleaguered, tormented, suffering, struggling or 
harassed artists prompting them (in their desperate anguish and high-anxiety) to heights of astonishing cre-
ative brilliance. By forcing a creative individual to instantaneously confront both “the present” as Present 
and “death” as Death, this mysterious red skeleton incites great art (i.e., Lascaux Cave, Altamira Cave, Gru-
newald, Durer’s prints, Tintoretto, Artemisia Gentileschi, Goya’s late-works, Géricault’s Raft, Van Gogh, 
R. A. Blakelock, A. P. Ryder, Romero de Torres, Nolde, Kollwitz, Goitia, Orozco, Siqueiros, Bacon, Mo-
therwell, Pollock, Kline, Rothko, Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares, Rafael Canogar, Ana Mendieta, Susan 
Rothenberg, Anselm Kiefer, etc.).
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76 77Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
the hIstory of duende:
 Lorca’s historic and revolutionary examination of the tri-fold nature of creativity evolved from 
his thorough investigation and meditation on Andalusian Gypsy’s cante jondo [aka canto-hondo (“deep 
song”)] and, its relationship to various specific Andalusian Gypsy dance-forms. However, beyond his innate 
Gypsyphilia; also at play within Lorca’s discovery of the triumvirate of human creative-inspiration (muses, 
angels, and the duende) are his own feelings of being unfairly targeted, victimized, tormented and harassed 
by his former lover and friend Salvador Dalí. Hence, during the early 1930s, another ostensible source, 
which presumably affected the sudden advent of Lorca’s duende theory was his apparent fixation with the art 
and ideas of his ‘old’ college-friend and “crush:” Salvador Dalí (3). Despite the fact that Lorca had grown 
estranged from Dali; due to alleged insults purportedly aimed at the poet within Dalí’s and Luis Buňuel’s 
collaborative Surrealist film: An Andalusian Dog, 1929. Something in that film had greatly grieved and 
insulted Lorca to the point that he left Europe to attend Columbia University (New York City, NY) from 
1929 to 1930. 
 Even before his departure, Lorca was aware of the evolving aesthetic formulation of what would 
eventually become Dali’s “Critical Paranoid Method”(4). Starting in 1928 with his Anti-Artistic Manifes-
to, Dalí asserted that great art sprang from courageous confrontations and reactions against overwhelming 
uncertainty, terror, fear, pity and dread, thereby yielding hyper-imaginative forms of profound and sublime 
art. Overall, Dali derived his theory from three philosophical sources: Aristotle’s notion of catharsis as well 
as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s and Edmund Burke’s views on the nature of the sublime. Also, of great 
significance to him was Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, which acknowledged that the 
obscure iconology of dreams divulged subconscious manifestations of suppressed memories. 
 Nevertheless, despite these philosophical currents, Dali’s foremost artistic interests were (for the 
most part) psychological or concerned by-and-large with the visual perception of symbols; and not with 
defining (as Lorca identified from 1930 to 1934) three extraordinary incarnations (or “spiritual entities”) 
responsible for causing or rousing all human acts of creativity: muses, angels, and the duende. Each of these 
singular supernatural beings utilized distinctive divine powers and approaches for provoking, conjuring, or 
evoking artistic creativity. Beyond his profound Gypsyphilia, an attempt to out-theorize Dalí about the 
nature of art — may have unavoidably obligated Lorca to reveal all three supernatural agents that inspire 
every aspect of artistic-creativity. In addition, Lorca’s daring disclosure was designed to challenge Dali’s 
preliminary articulation (in 1928) of what would become (by 1934) his Paranoiac-Critical Method. The he-
roic need to throw down an audacious philosophical and theoretical gauntlet may have been the key factor, 
propelling Lorca’s insightful (“ground-breaking”) ideas about the inherent nature of duende. For Lorca, the 
vital impulse driving genuine and authentic creativity is Death (itself); for him, the duende is an embodi-
ment or specter of Death as a living, breathing, dark or extreme exaggeration of Henri Bergson’s élan vital, 
which Bergson had articulated (earlier in 1907) as an anti-Darwinian evolutionary theory that inadvertently 
derives from Friedrich Nietzsche’s buoyant primordial “life-force” concept that Nietzsche envisioned as the 
embodiment of Will (an “incarnate Will”) behind The Will to Power. In Lorca’s essay, this Nietzschean/
Bergsonian WILL is what animates “The Girl of the Combs” to sing incredibly or exceptionally “without a 
voice . . . but, with duende.” Accordingly, the duende (when unleashed) reveals the sublime sublimity con-
cealed within art’s marrow and blood . . . giving free rein to the internal immanent (or inner) dark matter of 
art. Hence, as stated throughout Lorca’s essay, the duende is never transcendental (or concerned with “The 
Without”); instead, it is immanentist, deriving from “The Within” (5a).
 Evolving from Nietzsche’s and Bergson’s ideas; the German phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger 
argued that real “freedom” necessitates a deep meditation (or direct confrontation) with death. According 
to Heidegger, only a face-to-face awareness of death can breed authentic-freedom (accounting for an innate 
or inherent sense-of-freedom within each human being). Heidegger’s ideas are almost identical to those of 
Federico Garcia-Lorca’s Theory of the Duende (1933), ascribing a “here-and-now” (present) confrontation 
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with Saturnal Death as the source of the rarest and most precious form of artistic creativity: duende, which 
signifies a mano-a-mano encounter with Death, prompting true FREEDOM and mega “creativity.” Thus, 
the duende is simultaneously both the nemesis and envoy of Thanatos. In Lorca’s 1933 essay, the duende is 
a primal and terrifying manifestation of the creative-impulse, originating through (or by means of) an artist’s 
valiant face-to-face encounter (in the “Present”) with “Death”(5b).
 In 1930, Lorca departed New York, heading back to Spain with a brief stop-over in Cuba. Ac-
cording to Ben Belitt, it was during his Havana sojourn that he began gathering and developing the initial 
working-draft of Play and Theory of the Duende. Frequently, between 1930 and 1934, Lorca’s slowly (or 
leisurely) amused himself with the budding draft(s) of the provisional duende theory, which was his main 
theoretical aesthetic pursuit in the early-1930s, as well as providing a lively topic of conversation among 
close friends and acquaintances. 
 After three years in Spain, in 1933, Lorca shipped onthe Spanish passenger-liner Conte Grande 
from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, Argentina; to attend the American premier of his play Blood Wedding. 
During that voyage, he completed the tragedy Yerma and put the finishing touches on the Duende-essay. 
While in Buenos Aires, he contacted his old friend (that he had first met in Barcelona in 1927), the acclaimed 
Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who was serving as Chile’s Consul General in Argentina. 
 Neruda was present for Lorca’s lecture entitled Play and Theory of the Duende, which was deli-
vered at the Sociedad Amigos del Arte, Buenos Aires in 1933(6). It was during this Buenos Aires lecture 
that Lorca revealed and defined his innovative theory pertaining to three paranormal incarnations that are 
directly responsible for all human artistic inspiration and creativity in all the arts: muses, angels, and the 
duende. Another major consequence of his brilliant 1933 Buenos Aires lecture would be Lorca’s enduring 
partnership with Neruda in advocacy of “the duende” as a rare and distinctive quality in all the arts. Lorca’s 
close association with Neruda in promoting the theory will be elaborated below in the section beneath, whi-
ch is titled: “A Growing Awareness of the Duende in Visual Art after 1934.”
contrAstIng the duende wIth Muses & Angels:
 In his 1933 Duende essay, Lorca argues that most art is created via inspiration from the muses, who 
are obsessed with (or by) the past. For Lorca, “muse-inspired” art is created via memories, experiences, 
preconceptions, or by way of previously known things and ideas. According to Lorca, this need for artistic-
-reminiscence preoccupies Classicism, Academicism, Romanticism, all forms of Geometric-Abstraction, 
and generally most ART (approximately 90% of all art is of the muses). We find the muses lingering behind 
Lord Byron’s and William Wordsworth’s Romantic idea that, ‘Poetry [“Art”] is “the spontaneous overflow 
of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”(7.a.). In the visual arts, 
such muse-engendered or muse-stimulated artists include Apelles, Giotto, Masaccio, Uccello, Perugino, 
Michelangelo, Raphael, Poussin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Cezanne, Picasso, Rivera, Botero, Mel Ramos, 
Alex Katz, Richard Estes, William Bailey, Peter Haley, etc. In fact, most artists (in all fields of creativity) 
universally belong to the muses’ group --- the list is enormous, and could include, e.g., Grant Wood, Barnett 
Newman, Judy Chicago, Judy Baca, Mark Tansey, Maya Lin, Nikolai Buglaj, José Rodeiro’s murals (and his 
9/11 painting) or Kara Walker, although Rodeiro’s other famous 9/11 image that is titled Firefighter (or The 
Dying Stockbroker), 2001, actually has the duende; probably because that work erupted instantaneously out 
of the artist’s frantic ashen despair on September 11, 2001. 
 In terms of their features, characteristics, and peculiarities, the muses’ criteria as well as that of 
angels and the duende are not exclusive or restricted to western European or American art and culture. In 
actuality, these three divine embodiments of inspiration originate in India; and are presumably, at their core, 
best understood within their Eastern context, e.g., the duende as Kali (“Black Time”) or as Lorca asserts: 
the duende is the Dionysian impulse (and therefore, the Bacchic impulse, as well as the Krishna impulse, 
and hence, the Vishnu (Hari)/Brahman impulse). The duende is equally Shiva(Hara) dancing the nataraja 
dance, consequently also at play in the duende is the divine Hari-Hara. In this “inherited” Asian perspective, 
muses (shaktas (devis)), angels (asuras (devas)), and the duende (Shri Krishna as Kali) are manifestations 
or avatars of various primordial (“elemental”) Hindu divinities. As it pertains to polytheistic religions, the 
word “elemental” can be defined as the embodiment (or incorporation) by specific supernatural entities of 
powers belonging to nature (i.e., wind, rain, lightning, day, night, moon, sun, storms, sexuality, agriculture, 
past, present, and future, etc.). In elemental religions, each natural phenomenon is personified or controlled 
by a supernatural entity, e.g. muses (“the past”); angels (“the future”), and the duende (“the present”). 
 When considering the origin of the Andalusian duende, it is vital to take into account that Gypsy ar-
tistry is a passion that originated in India (among a group of low-caste performers whose DNA is traceable to 
India’s Rajputs of Rajasthan. In the 5th Century CE, thousands of Rajput traveling musicians (Zotts or Luris 
(Lulis)) split into various tribes (Doms, Kolis, Jats, etc.) and started migrating or were officially displaced 
from India; heading first to Persia, and then wandering for centuries; until, they predominantly settled in 
Egypt, where their developing cultural-identity was carefully honed, crafted, and perfected. Subsequently, 
Gypsies spread throughout Eastern Europe becoming the Rom (Romi) of Romania, or, from Egypt, they 
crossed North Africa into Spain -- becoming the Gitanos or “Gypsies,” a name that erroneously defined them 
as “Egyptians;” although, this protracted 6th and 7th Century caravan of émigrés from Alexandria [(which 
gradually settled in Cadiz as well as throughout Andalusia (southern Spain))] were not actually ‘Coptic’ 
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Egyptians; but, rather, Rajputi-Indians, whose divine hermaphroditic hybridization of Shri Krishna as Kali 
evolved into the red-cloaked boney, skinny, and walking-dead Saturn identified by Gypsies as the Andalu-
sian duende. 
 In Spain, over-centuries, the Gypsies’ extraordinary Gitano-culture evolved into something deep, 
inherent, and profound. Spain provided a rich emotional and metaphysical soil; perfect for garnering the 
dark effusions of Saturnal duende. Equally, we could map the migration of Hindu-Aryan shaktas into Greek 
Ionian muses or the Hindu-Aryan asuras into Hebraic angels, easily plotting their transcultural evolution, 
their intricate ancestral roots, and their circuitous passage from India into Europe, transmogrifying Hindu 
religio-iconology into Greco-Roman muses; Judeo-Christian angels, and the Andalusian Gypsy duende. 
 Regarding angels, as described above, Lorca sees angelic art in terms of the future (not the past). 
Creativity motivated by angels represents about 9% of all art. Angelic artists are radiant, colorful, hyper-
-imaginative and airy artists like Fra Angelico, Fra Lippi, the young-Botticelli, Stephan Lochner, Jean Fou-
quet, da Messina, Cranach the Elder, Altdorfer, Runge, Blake, Turner, Monet, Renoir, Chagall, Dufy, Henri 
Rousseau, Franz Marc, Matisse, Miró, Reverón, Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Scha-
piro, Chris Ofili, as well as others. Distaining gravity, angelic art is visionary, floating, bright-hued and 
levitating, while prophetically aiming at the future. For Lorca, angelic-art is an art of brilliant foresight, 
vivid presages, longing anticipation and celestial prophecy. However, rarely some artists (i.e., Bosch, El 
Greco, Baldung Grien, Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, Rossetti, Duchamp, Kahlo and Koh) simultaneously 
manifests both angelic and duendesque tendencies in their unique imagery and style. Hence, some unusual 
artists manifest two or more inspirational sources (or traits) in their art, e.g., contemporary artists like Jesus 
Rivera, Duda Penteado, Gabriel Navar, Christie Devereaux, and Charles Hayes maintain both angelic and 
duende aspects; equally José Rodeiro and Raul Villarreal have manifested (from time-to-time) all three mo-
des of inspiration in their art: muses, angels, and the duende But this is extremely rare; since Lorca clearly 
states that the arrival of the duende ultimately drives out the other sources of inspiration, always (in time) 
“putting to flight angels and muses.” 
 Concerning “when” and “where”duende appears and how it effects art requires an astute awareness 
or recognition that duende is the rarest thing in art: uncommon, infrequent, and inconstant; it unexpectedly 
comes (and without warning) goes. For example, keep in mind that even the quintessential artist that Lorca 
twice cites in the essay as being the epitome of duende: Francisco Goya fell short of the duende throughout 
the first 47 years of his life. Goya was primarily an angelic artist that realized or actualized his duende 
after 1793 in his late-work, especially his later The Black Paintings and throughout his various print-series. 
Goya’s duende precipitated from a Saturnal mid-life health crisis that left the master deaf, a nervous-wreck, 
and a shell of his former self. Also, in the essay, Lorca’s “The Girl of the Combs” is without any duende at 
one moment (“Viva París!”) and then fully-possessed, overtaken, overwhelmed and convulsing in a fit (an 
orgasm) of duende - the next. Hence, the duende is an unusual existent supernatural thing (which sparks 
the highest form of creativity) that comes and goes when least expected, often arriving unannounced from 
the core of ones being, as an absolute realization of Death – that materializes simultaneously by way of an 
authentic and tangible confrontation (or battle for survival) against Death (itself). 
 Lorca’s conception of the duende is not based on the little goblin of northern Spain; rather it is the 
Andalusian duende (the “Spirit of Death Walking”), a walking red-robed skeleton with a scythe and hour-
-glass: reminiscent of the dead-god Saturn. For Lorca, duende represents less than 1% of all artistic creati-
vity; because it signifies a difficult task: the creation of art “fully” in the presence of Death . . . thus, risking 
everything. Equally, it is the creation of art in the here-&-now (the present). Thus, it confronts death in the 
absolute present! The art of the duende includes Piranesi’s Prison Series; and as confirmed above, Goya’s 
Black Paintings, and his various print series; Gericault’s Raft of The Medusa; Van Gogh’s last painting(s) 
especially Wheatfield with Crows, The Rhone River at Night, The Church at Auvers and Starry 
Night; Edvard Munch’s Berlin works; Nolde’s various masks, as well as masterpieces by these significant 
Abstract Expressionists, i.e., Jackson Pollock, Clifford Still, Grace Hartigan, Peter Busa, Franz Kline’s 
black-&-white paintings; Robert Motherwell’s Elegies, or his Duende Series, the bulk of George McNeil’s 
“scalded art;” currently Anselm Kiefer’s “Unknown Masterpiece,” Susan Rothenberg’s shamanic images; 
Herb Rosenberg’s The Bombing of Baghdad; Hugo Morales’s Silent Scream Series; Duda Penteado’s initial 
Glocallica Series images; Virna Vargas’s prints (especially, those Vargas images that allude of Alberto Gia-
cometti), Charles Hayes Moon-Series; and all the art of Sergio Villamizar. Along with these 20th and 21st 
Century artists, the list can include: Josephine Barreiro, Christie Devereaux, Emanoel Araujo, Jesus Rivera, 
Olga M. Bautista, Adrienne Wheeler, as well as occasionally Gabriel Navar, Jesus Rivera, Chuck Plosky, 
George Nelson Preston, Raúl Villarreal and José Rodeiro. 
A growIng AwAreness of the duende In VIsuAl Art After 1934:
 In 1934, Pablo Neruda was appointed Chile’s Consul General to Barcelona, requiring intermittent 
official trips to Madrid. However, he was already somewhat familiar with both cities, because seven years 
prior (in the summer of 1927), he had traversed much of Spain, especially Madrid and Barcelona. In Barce-
lona in 1927, while lunching at the London Bar on La Rambla, he met the Andalusian poet and playwright, 
Federico Garcia Lorca and the aspiring young Catalan painter and set-designer Salvador Dali, who were 
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82 83Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
vociferously carousing during their lunch break from the Teatre Goya, where they were rehearsing and sta-
ging their June premier of Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda. Fascinated by the pair’s cavorting, Neruda soon 
introduced himself and was encouraged by his two new, charming, brilliant and amusing acquaintances to 
see the play, which he enjoyed about a week after the premier. During his sojourn in Barcelona throughout 
the month of June (1927), by design, Lorca and Dali ran into Neruda for tapas or apéritifs usually within 
white marbled tabletop tertulia bars in Teatre Goya’s vicinity. Adding to the fun, in June of 1927, Dali had 
procured a solo exhibit of Lorca’s whimsical “angelic” 2-D works at the Dalmau Gallery (Barcelona), invi-
ting Neruda to attend the opening. 
 Seven-years later, Neruda began his Chilean consular duties, first in Barcelona (1934), and then in 
Madrid (1935). After July 17, 1936, as the Spanish Civil War commenced, Neruda began making both “tou-
rist” and “official” trips to Paris, scouting for a new place to live should conditions in Madrid deteriorate. 
In 1936, while visiting Paris, looking for a new place to dwell, Neruda introduced his fellow countryman 
Chilean artist Roberto Matta Echaurren [(whom he had first met in Madrid in 1934. In fact, this preliminary 
Madrid encounter between the two greatest Chilean artists of the 20th Century is thoroughly described be-
low)] to Salvador Dalí and André Breton. By 1938, as Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s siege of Madrid 
intensified, Neruda moved to Paris, sharing an apartment with Matta; during these years (1936-1939), both 
Matta and Neruda frequently associated with Breton, Dali, Picasso, Miro, Wifredo Lam (from 1938-1939), 
in addition to the Austrian Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen and the ubiquitous French Norman, Marcel Duchamp, 
as well as other leading figures, which were, in one way or another, connected with Surrealism. 
 In early-1939, Duchamp advised Matta and Neruda to flee Paris for New York City. Matta heeded 
Duchamp’s warning and escaped to Manhattan, where he soon befriended Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Mo-
therwell, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline and Peter Busa, as well as other leading figures of the New York Scho-
ol. Inspired by Matta’s account of Lorca’s duende-theory; Motherwell promptly began applying Lorca’s 
duende-tenets to his emerging “non-objective” visual art. The history of that insightful decision will be 
articulated below. In the meantime, unlike Matta, Neruda was unable to heed Duchamp’s advise, because 
finally in 1939, he had obtained the much-coveted Chilean consular-posting to Paris, unfortunately commen-
cing at the outbreak of World War II; a conflict that soon made his (long-awaited) Paris-posting hazardous, 
difficult, and ultimately undesirable (especially on June 14, 1940, when the German army marched into 
Paris). 
 Fortuitously, by early-1940, Neruda was named Chilean Counsel General to Mexico, where he re-
connected with Breton, who was there as well. In Mexico, Neruda and Breton clashed over the future of glo-
bal communism, since Breton favored Leon Trotsky; while Neruda supported Joseph Stalin as supreme lea-
der of the International Communist Party. As a result, during his Mexican stint as Chilean Consul-General, 
Neruda was tangentially entangled in David Alfaro Siqueiros’s failed attempt (in May 1940) to assassinate 
Trotsky in Coyoacan, near Mexico City. By the way, it is important to note that thanks to Neruda’s encou-
ragement and careful explication of Lorca’s theory, most of Siqueiros’s art exudes both a rabid and a raved 
duende, whereas Mexico’s two leading modernist Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo completely lack duende. 
Kahlo’s art is, by and large, angelic; while Rivera’s grand manner style exalts the muses. 
 Nevertheless, six-years prior to Neruda and Siquieros’s plot against Trotsky in Mexico (1940); and 
three years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936), as well as five-years before World War II 
(1939), in 1934, Neruda (as stated above) was working in Spain (as a Chilean diplomat)while living an 
“artistic” existence in Madrid, cavorting and collaborating with Lorca to promote “new” innovative, energe-
tic, exigent, and poignant poetry and art. Thus, our history of the duende must delve into earlier “critical” 
events that transpired in 1934 in order to follow the actual historical trajectory of the duende’s mainstream 
manifestations in contemporary poetry and visual art. For example, according to Robert M. Gleaves’s inci-
sive research; on December 6, 1934, Lorca invited Neruda to attend a literary gathering in Madrid, where 
the Chilean poet was unexpectedly introduced by Lorca via the below “duende-oriented” verbal-portrait, 
portraying the Chilean as: 
 “One of those authentic poets who have their senses attuned to a world which is not ours and which 
few persons can perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to sentiment with its attendant 
pain than to intellect, closer to blood than to ink. A poet filled with mysterious voices, which fortunately he 
himself is unable to decipher. . . . . Pablo Neruda’s poetry rises up with a tone of passion, tenderness, and 
sincerity never before equaled in America.” (7.b.)
 In his 1974 Memoirs (entitled “I Confess I Have Lived”) and in his earlier 1947 poem, “I’m Ex-
plaining a Few Things,” Neruda liberally returned Lorca’s above-stated compliments, divulging throughout 
the poem (via the images of specific flowers) his fond-affection for Lorca. Neruda’s admiration for Lorca is 
equally evident in a powerful “duende-oriented” passage from his Memoirs, wherein Neruda reveals how 
much Lorca meant to him, exclaiming:
 “What a poet! [of] grace and genius; when did a winged heart and a crystalline waterfall, ever come 
together in anyone else as they did in him. Federico Garcia Lorca was the extravagant “duende,” his was a 
magnetic joyfulness that generated a zest for life in his heart and radiated it like a planet.” (Memoirs 122)
 Beyond Lorca’s and Neruda’s reacquaintance in Madrid in 1934, rekindling their private and candid 
mutual “literary” admiration society; nevertheless, the year 1934 represents a crucial and decisive year wi-
thin the history of “duende-inspired” visual art, due to Lorca’s and Neruda’s imparting of the basic precepts 
of duende-theory to [(the young Chilean visual artists)] Roberto Matta Echaurren in Madrid (Spain) in 1934. 
This vital transmission of duende-theory occurred during several affable encounters between Lorca, Neru-
da, and the young Chilean artist, who was in Spain, visiting his aunt, while on holiday from his exacting 
architectural-rendering job with Le Corbusier in Paris (France). 
 According to Alain Sayaq’s account (Sayaq at al., Matta, Paris, 1985), these on-going Lorca/Ne-
ruda aesthetic conversations with Matta, [(the future Chilean Surrestist painter, whose art (from his early-
-‘Psychological Morphologies’ series to his later ‘Inscapes’) is generally considered “angelic” in nature)]. 
As reported by Sayaq, both Lorca and Neruda gave Matta letters-of-introduction addressed to Salvador Dali, 
who was in New York City, due his severe (official and “political”) conflicts with André Breton, and as a re-
sult, the Spaniard was in hot water with the entire Parisian Surrealist Movement. For instance, in February 
25, 1934, in the Hotel Opera (Paris), Breton had placed Dali on trial for painting Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as 
William Tell (in the painting The Enigma of William Tell, 1933), as well as addressing Dali’s acknowledged 
fascination for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In a few years, Dalí added Francisco Franco, as someone 
that equally captivated his interest. As a reward, for his flagrant rightwing sympathies, during the height of 
the dictatorship, Franco permitted Dali’s return to Spain. On the other hand, Pablo Picasso (due to his hatred 
of Franco and Fascism, as well as his membership in the French Communist Party) refused to step-foot in 
Spain until democracy was restored.
 Through Sayaq’s 1985 art historical research, we know that this above-described historic Madrile-
nian string-of-meetings [(between Matta, Lorca, and Neruda)] occurred in December (1934), while Matta 
was (as previously stated) visiting his aunt in Madrid, Spain. On Matta’s behalf, both Lorca and Neruda 
sent letters-of-introduction to the Catalan painter Salvador Dalí who was at that time in New York (since 
November, 1934) with his new wife Gala, hiding from the ire of André Breton, who had more-or-less exiled 
Dalí, declaring him an interloper and a persona non grata in Paris; thereby, forbidding him from official 
organizational participation in the Surrealist Movement, although, Dali was still allowed to exhibit with the 
Surrealist until the advent of World War II, when Dali’s blatant pro-fascist leanings became untenable for 
the mostly Pro-Trotsky Marxist Surrealist-group, especially annoying to Breton was Dalí’s increasing infa-
tuation with Generalisimo Francisco Franco in Spain, which had begun in 1936. After marrying Gala in a 
civil ceremony in Paris in January 1934, they eventually spent their honeymoon in New York City during 
, p. 72-98, 2012. , p. 72-98, 2012.
84 85Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
the fall and winter of 1934-35, after being partially-excommunicated from Surrealism by Breton in February 
(1934), specifically from administrative participation in Surrealism. Breton’s censure of Dali occurred a 
few months before the Catalan’s arrival in New York City (NY). After landing in the ‘Big Apple’ in early 
fall (1934), he promptly began working for several 5th Avenue department stores as a large window-display 
decorator. All the while, Dali continued to paint his bizarre and fantastic imagery, which is generally dee-
med (for the most part) muse(s)-oriented with occasional angelic touches or tendencies. In fact, Dalí clai-
med direct kinship (and boasted deep aesthetic-affinity) with such orthodox muse-oriented “Neo-Apelles” 
classicists as Raphael, Vermeer, Velazquez, Gerrit Dou and Meissonier. After Matta’s return to Paris in 1936 
from England where the Chilean had been working with architect Walter Gropius, he contacted Dalí, who 
was unable to introduce Matta to any of the Surrealists, due to Breton’s rift with the Spaniard. Therefore, 
Neruda (while visiting Paris in 1936) arranged Matta’s meeting with the founder and leader of Surrealism, 
André Breton (who was fundamentally a “muse(s)-inspired” poet) who lacked (just like Dalí) any form of 
genuine duende. In 1937, while still in Paris, fascinated by Matta’s wild convoluted drawings, Breton in-
vited the Chilean to join the Surrealists. Thanks to Breton’s praise, Matta abruptly abandoned architecture 
and began painting.
 During this time, as he had done previously starting in 1923 with Dalí at The University of Madrid’s 
La Residencia, Lorca (via telegraph, mail, and telephone) mentored the angelic Matta as a protégé. Lorca 
took a keen interest in Matta’s artistic-career from 1934 until the poet’s assassination on August 18, 1936, 
(dying at 38-years of age). In these correspondences, they often spoke about the duende’s extraordinary and 
unexpected ability to spark artistic creativity in the “here” and “now.” Yet, the angelic Matta, despite his 
best efforts, usually fell short of duende’s full creative potential, since the Chilean’s over-active imagination 
favored visual art that was visionary, prophetic, and capable of imaginatively exploring other galaxies, as is 
evident in his Surrealist ‘Psychological Morphologies’ series and in his later ‘Inscapes.’ 
 Nevertheless, as stated above, in 1937, astounded by Matta’s virtuoso flair for feral draughtsmanship, 
Breton asked him to join the Surrealist Movement and create illustrations for the magazine, Minotaur; which 
Matta did, along with launching his painting career. However, like Breton, Matta never fully grasped the 
full potential of duende in his art. Nevertheless, Mattathoroughly understood the theory of duende, and 
eventually instructed other artists on duende’s fine points.
 Perhaps, Matta naïvely assumed that his wild interplanetary imagery sufficed, and as a result, he 
mistakenly thought that his art had a rudimentary-form of duende. Or, perhaps, he was confused, or else mi-
sinformed or disorientated, after seeing Lorca’s fanciful forays into visual art, which were odd Surreal dra-
wings and watercolors (‘curiosities’) that were often whimsical, “angelic,” and silly. However, in Lorca’s 
tragedies and poems, these trite child-like qualities (inhabiting most of his 2-D art) are not remotely evident 
in his greatest poems and tragedies, which are (as Neruda described above), passionate erupting volcanoes 
of dark duende-churned lava. Like Lorca and Neruda, in his doctrine of “Creative Evolution,” Henri Ber-
gson viewed artistic creativity as equivalent to psycho-emotive volcanic-eruptions. Nonetheless, Lorca’s 
mentor-relationship of Matta is the means by which duende attains a beachhead within both 20th and 21st 
Century visual art. 
 For instance, five-years after Lorca’s assassination in Alfacar, Granada, in 1936 (at the start of the 
Spanish Civil War), ‘duende-theory’ was first introduced in New York. This crucial moment in the history 
of duende-art occurred in 1941 when Matta met Robert Motherwell (an American pioneer of Abstract Ex-
pressionism). Motherwell (who was one of the younger members of the Abstract Expressionists Group) 
is recognized for painting several initial revolutionary Abstract Expressionist images, which roused other 
Manhattan-based abstract-painters to follow suit. Like many others in the group that eventually comprised 
the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, he hailed from the far west: Washington and California. 
 As their friendship evolved in New York City and in Mexico, Matta disclosed Lorca’s idea(s) 
to him, prompting Motherwell’s first-hand investigation of the late-poet’s “The ‘Duende’ Essay.” Hence, 
Motherwell was the first US artist to fully grasp the artistic ramifications of Lorca’s duende theory, unders-
tanding, in particular, its enormous inspirational potential for igniting uncompromising-forms (or “highest-
-forms”) of artistic creativity in the visual arts, poetry, music, and artistic performances. In fact, earlier, 
during his study at Columbia University with Meyer Shapiro in 1940-1941, Motherwell was well aware that 
Garcia-Lorca had traversed those same hallowed halls, during the poet’s brief Columbia University matri-
culation (1929-1930). 
 In her book, Abstract Expressionists, Rachel Barnes states that as their friendship grew, Matta trave-
led with Motherwell to Mexico in spring 1941, accompanying them were Barbara Reis (the daughter of the 
alleged disreputable art-accountant Bernard Reis) and Matta’s wife Anne Alpert Clark. During that journey, 
on a boat-ride, Motherwell met his wife the Mexican actress Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros (the first of 
his four wives). Through Barnes’s account, we learn that the entire above-named coterie (of artists, spouses, 
& friends) spent the summer in Taxco, Mexico. 
 At that time, Taxco and other Mexican cities were overflowing with refugee Spanish Loyalists 
émigrés from the recent Spanish Civil War, many of whom were acquainted with Lorca’s poetry and thea-
trical works. Lorca’s theory was often discussed in dingy smoke-filled cantinas where tequila flowed until 
dawn while performers wailed woeful rancheras. Also, during this trip to Mexico, Matta reconnected with 
the Austrian Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, who he had known in Paris, who was living in exile in Mexico. 
Matta introduced him to Motherwell; who promptly collaborated with Paalen on various projects (including 
the journal DYN, which stands for dynaton, a Greek term, indicating, “That which is possible.” Dynaton 
is almost identical to Alfred Jarry’s 1901 concept of Pataphysics, which acknowledges the relativity and 
awareness of “wherever a person stands in the present;” a theory very much like the theory of the duende. 
Thus, Physics references the past, Metaphysics indicates the future, and Pataphysics is about the here and 
now (present), especially in terms of “that which is possible.” Also, Paalen and Motherwell initially colla-
borated on the book Form and Sense, which was published in New York by Motherwell after the Austrian’s 
suicide in 1959 in Taxco. Like Matta, Paalen’s art is primarily “angelic.” His bizarre suicide resulted from 
bitter feelings of alienation, rejection, and isolation away from André Breton’s Surrealist Movement. Paalen 
had become disillusioned by Breton’s innate totalitarianism; yet, found that he nevertheless missed Breton’s 
ardor and enthusiasm for Surrealism. He wanted to reconcile with Breton. But, he knew that Breton was 
callous, ruthless, and unforgiving. Notice that Dalí was similarly grappling with many of the same realiza-
tions concerning Breton and Surrealism. 
, p. 72-98, 2012. , p. 72-97, 2012.
86 87Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
 As World War II ended, duende captivated New York City via Motherwell’s and Matta’s continued 
conversations about Lorca’s theory at the American Abstract Artists Association (AAAA) on Riverside 
Drive (NYC), or at NYU’s Art Club in Greenwich Village, and at the Arts Student League; attending were 
Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Clifford Still, Grace Hartigan, Peter Busa and 
George McNeil and other New York School artists, who were exposed to the basic tenets of Lorca’s duende 
theory, which almost immediately began infusing, penetrating, and inspiring their art from 1945 onward. 
Thanks to Matta’s and Motherwell’s proselytizing, Lorca’s duende theory by and large permeated the first-
-generation of Abstract Expressionism. After World War II, this infiltration of duende into the New York 
School is evident in several of Motherwell’s titles; or in prose sketches by Clyfford Still, describing his 
work, stating, “These [works] are not paintings in the usual sense . . . [instead] they are life and death mer-
ging in fearful union . . . .” [David Anfam, et al. Clyfford Still (2001)].
wIfredo lAM & george McneIl:
 The Cuban, Lam came to Madrid, Spain, in 1923 to study art, arriving a year after Lorca and Dali. 
The Spaniards were in their baccalaureate second-year; Lorca on leave from law school within El Colegio 
del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús of the University of Granada (Granada) and Dali within the Academy of San 
Fernando (Madrid). While Lam rented a small modest apartment in Madrid’s rundown Arco de Cuchilleros 
neighborhood, Lorca and Dali lived in the fêted Residencia de Estudiantes, where they befriended Luis Bu-
nuel, the future world-renowned film director. Built in 1910, La Residencia had lodged (and continued to 
accommodate) many luminaries of the Generation of 1898 (i.e., Juan Ramón Jiménez, José Ortega y Gasset, 
Miguel de Unamuno, Ramon de Valle-Inclán and Eugenio d´Ors). From 1922-1926 when Lorca, Dali, and 
Bunuel resided there, it housed many members of “The Generation of 1927,” i.e., Pedro Salinas, Blas Cabre-
ra, Jorge Guillen, Vicente Aleixandre, Gerardo Diego, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Antonio Machado and 
Damaso Alonso. [(The author of “this” text, Dr. José Rodeiro met the “muses-inspired” Classicist Alonso 
via Rodeiro’s sister Joyce Martinez; she had studied with Alonso in the 1970s at the University of Madrid. 
Alonso furnished (your author) many helpful insights into the Generation of 1927 and their raucous roaring-
-20s student days at La Residencia de Estudiantes)]. Alonso revealed that after 1929, when Dali and Bunuel 
released their collaborative Surrealist film An Andalusian Dog (1929), Lorca became immensely upset with 
the film, and became more and more estranged from Dali and Bunuel (as explained above in the section 
titled: The History of Duende).
 From 1923 to1926, coincidentally, both Dali and Lam learned academic painting from Fernando 
Alvarez de Sotomayor, the Director of the Museo del Prado, who gave private lessons in his studio to Lam, 
while (at the same time) instructing Dali at the Academy. Due to his exotic handsome Caribbean features, 
Lam was noticed by Dali, Lorca, and Bunuel. Hence, Lam was informally acquainted with all three; but, 
this was long before Dali’s formulation of The Paranoiac-Critical Method or Lorca’s theoretical realization 
of the role that duende played in the highest forms of creativity, or Bunuel’s first ventures into filmmaking. 
Unlike Dali, who ridiculed his teachers at the Academy, Lam freely absorbed de Sotomayor’s academic 
lessons, but (even so) he was drawn to modern abstract imagery displayed in contemporary art journals and 
newspapers, which presented black-&-white printed-photographs of Paris avant-garde art works, especially 
Picasso’s works. During this time, Lam dated Eva Piriz, marrying her in 1929. However, by 1931, due to 
severe tuberculosis, both his wife and new-born baby succumbed. Haunted by the specter of their deaths, 
Lam and his art were thrown into paroxysms of despair -- ameliorated only through his feverish trance-like 
undertaking of duende-laden paintings. But, it is important to take into account that during this tragic time, 
the hitherto obscure duende-concept had not yet been fully realized by Lorca; nor had it been explained to 
Lam by anyone. Nevertheless, a manifestation of the duende concept was evident in his work. Additional 
anguish pierced his life, as Spain in 1936 fell into Civil War. The seven years from 1931-1938 were bleak 
years for Lam. Consequently, in order to escape the ongoing siege of Madrid by Franco’s rebels, Lam fled 
to Paris in 1938. 
 Before leaving Spain, Lam was given a “letter-of-introduction” to Pablo Picasso, by Manuel (“Ma-
nolo”) Hugué an old friend of the Spaniard. Despite his timidity about meeting his hero, Lam used Hugué’s 
generous introduction to get in touch with his idol. Luckily, Picasso immediately adored Lam; and soon the 
pair became inseparable. Among the things propelling Lam into Picasso’s arms was the Cuban’s desperate 
need for a safe-sanctuary, as well as a need to quickly establish himself successfully in Paris; moreover 
Madrid had provoked feelings of apprehension, vulnerability, insecurity and paranoia. Mostly, he fretted 
that Spain’s ills might cross the Pyrenees into France. For example, when at last (in March 1939) Madrid 
surrendered to the fascists, Franco permitted over-100,000 executions of captured Loyalists (Republicans) 
Majos/Majas that had defended Madrid, among them many of Lam’s Spanish friends.
 Meanwhile, safe in Paris, the young Cuban became Picasso’s protégée. The Spaniard introduced 
him to both Parisian avant garde artists and poets (i.e., Breton and most of the Surrealists), as well as leading 
expatriates from Latin America residing in “the City of Lights” in the late-1930s (i.e., Mario Carreño, Alejo 
Carpentier, and Pablo Neruda), as well as other major art world personalities. Within a year, he was invited 
by Breton into Surrealism’s inner-circle. But, on September 1, 1939 an event occurred, which blighted 
Lam’s meteoric rise in the Parisian art world as Picasso’s sidekick; Franco’s Spanish Civil War “helper” 
NAZI Germany invaded Poland; casting France and England into war against Hitler, commencing Europe’s 
entry into World War II.
 Drawn to Lam’s charismatic Caribbean features as well as his direct connections to Madrid’s recent 
Quixotic, heroic, yet failed, defense; Picasso took the young Cuban under his wing, introducing him to 
Michel Leiris, Pierre Loeb, Joan Miro, Georges Braques, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, Dora Maar, Nusch 
and Paul Eluard, Benjamin Péret, Remedios Varo, Tristan Tzara, Oscar Domínguez, Victor Brauner, Kurt 
Seligmann, Wolfgang Paalen and Roberto Matta Echaurren, along with authors and artists named previously 
in the preceding paragraph. Lam became a fixture at Picasso’s Parisian home; until the Spaniard left for 
Southern France. Occasionally, Lam dropped-by Matta’s and Neruda’s co-rented flat in Paris; during these 
visits, both regaled him with explications of Lorca’s duende theory; additionally they related episodes of 
camaraderie with the Granadaean poet (e.g., Neruda had spent time with Lorca in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, 
and Madrid; Matta knew the poet briefly in Madrid). Likewise, the Cuban reminisced about his cursory 
encounters with Lorca and Dalí in Madrid between 1923 and 1926. Lam and the two Chileans brooded over 
the fact that such an entertaining, vivacious, and brilliant poet (Federico Garcia Lorca) had been brutally 
assassinated in late-summer of 1936. As the conversation ebbed; Neruda divulged news that the famous 
British science fiction writer H. G. Wells, President of the PEN Club of London had tried to investigate 
Lorca’s disappearance, requesting from fascist officials detailed confirmation of Lorca’s execution. By 
1938, rumors about Lorca’s fate abounded. For decades, Spain’s triumphant fascists circumspectly allayed, 
or obfuscated, or minimized their blunders, massacres, and crimes. 
 Impressed by Matta’s and Neruda’s explication of Lorca’s duende theory, in France, Lam linked the 
idea of duende to his deep-rooted fascination and knowledge of African culture and art; especially African 
and Afro-Caribbean theological concepts, e.g., “the spirit of the dead watching.” Hence, Lam’s growing 
awareness of the duende was ironically nurtured by his attraction to African culture. This self-imposed 
confusion may have weakened Lam’s full commitment to an absolute or indispensable Gypsy-realization of 
duende. To boot, Picasso, Michel Leiris (an art historian and an assistant-curator within the African wing 
of the Musée de l’Homme: Paris’s main ethnological museum), plus, the gallerista Pierre Loeb, Alejo Car-
pentier (the Cuban novelist who wrote Ecue-yamba-o! (1933) as well as being an eminent Afro-Caribbean 
, p. 72-98, 2012. , p. 72-98, 2012.
88 89Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v. 3, n. 2 Poéticas Visuais, Bauru, v 3, n. 2
music ethnologist /musicologist) and Breton persuaded Lam in 1938-1940 (in Paris and Marseilles) to in-
vestigate African art and culture, as well as to aesthetically exploit or consider Afro-Cuban “syncretistic-
-religion” Santería as a vital source for his artistic inspiration. The sway of Picasso and his entourage 
led Lam toward the aesthetic of Africa and Oceania. Thus, throughout Lam’s Surrealist-phase rarely does 
duende manifest; although, the quality is occasionally noticeable in his best Negritude Surreal works. But, 
duende is never apparent in any of Picasso’s visual art or Breton’s poems. 
 In 1938, Lam accompanied Breton to Mexico, sojourning with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Du-
ring their visit, they met Leon Trotsky. Breton was in Mexico organizing a Latin American flavored Surrea-
list show within the Julian Levy Gallery, New York (1938). Without Breton, Lam left Mexico and returned 
to Paris. In 1939, as fascism cast a pall on Europe, Lam had his first solo show at the Galerie Pierre Loeb 
in Paris, as well as exhibiting with Picasso at New York’s Perls Galleries in an exhibit curated and orga-
nized by Picasso. As the German army marched into Paris, Lam fled to Marseilles, where he reconnected 
with Breton and a group of fellow Surrealists, who had established their headquarters at the Villa of Air-Bel 
(Marseilles), where Breton organized Surrealist games and activities as the anxious artists and poets waited 
to book passage to America. In Marseilles, Peggy Guggenheim helped Lam financially by purchasing two 
of his gouaches. Soon, Breton and his coterie arranged passage on the ship “Capitaine Paul-Merle” en 
route to the Caribbean; onboard were Breton, Lam (and his future wife Helena Holzer), Benjamin Peret, 
Remedios Varos, Claude Lévi-Strauss(the pioneer of Structural Anthropology, who wrote a book about this 
voyage: “The Sad Tropics”), Victor Serge, Anna Seghers, Oscar M. Domínguez (a dark brooding Surrealist 
painter from the Canary Islands crawling with duende), as well as Breton’s lover Jacqueline Lamba and their 
daughter Aube, etc., etcetera. In fact, although, set in 1931 instead of 1940, Katherine Anne Porter’s novel, 
Ship of Fools, was circuitously based on “this” legendary Surrealist refugee sea-voyage. 
 Despite threats from allied submarines and tropical storms, the ship reached the Island of Martini-
que, where Lam was immediately arrested because his official travel papers were in disarray. Every other 
day, Breton visited Lam in jail. It was during this period of Lam’s brief incarceration that Breton and he 
befriended Aimé Césaire the leader of Negritude (“Negrisme” or “Negrismo”) art movement and editor of 
Tropiques magazine, which fostered Latin America’s emerging Tropicalia art, poetry, and music movement, 
especially in Brazil. Breton and Lam forged strong aesthetic bonds with Césaire, whose brilliant artistic 
ideas (“aesthetic goals”) would robustly infuse and inform their art throughout the rest of their creative-li-
ves. In fact, Lam’s innovative new Negritude Surrealist works enhanced possibilities for Lorquean duende 
to emerge (from time-to-time), as well as furnishing the Cuban ample opportunities to create work free of 
obvious Picassoesque allusions.
 As soon as, possible, Lam and Breton and their entire coterie fled Martinique to the Dominican 
Republic and Haiti, where they met-up with Andre Masson, Pierre Mabille, and Eugenio Granell, and other 
Paris avant garde Surrealist artist-émigrés, as well as meeting all the leading artists of the island. During this 
time, Lam completed his duende-filled illustrations of Breton’s poem “Fata Morgana.” Despite trying, Lam 
was unable to obtain visas for Mexico and the US; consequently, he had to return to Cuba, when Breton, 
Peret, Varos and others set-off for Mexico, where they reconnected with Neruda, Paalen, and other former-
-Parisian artists and poets, who had relocated to Mesoamerica. Lam returned to Cuba in 1940-1941, imme-
diately noticing that Afro-Cubans were often mistreated by the island’s white “aristocracy,” which served 
to further imbed his Surrealist aesthetic to that of Aimé Césaire’s Negritude as well as stylistic influences 
from emerging international Tropicalia. The best example of this stylistic fusion is Lam’s The Jungle, 1943, 
which even has the duende. 
 In 1940, Motherwell arrived in New York to study at Columbia University’s Department of Art His-
tory and Archeology. His favorite teacher, Professor Meyer Schapiro connected Motherwell with émigré 
artists in exile in New York City, such as Leger, Miro, Chagall, Hans Hofmann, Breton (who had just arri-
ved from Mexico), Tanguy and Roberto Matta, Matta and Motherwell became fast friends; in 1941, they 
travelled together to Mexico for six months [(an account of their journey is provided above in the section 
entitled: A Growing Awareness of the Duende in Visual Art after 1934)].
 Departing Mexico, Breton arrived in New York in 1940; where he convinced Pierre Matisse to take 
Lam (as well as other Surrealists painters) into the Frenchman’s New York City gallery’s stable of artists. 
After World War II ended, Lam in 1946 arrived in New York City, where his old-friend Matta introduced 
Lam to Arshile Gorky and Robert Motherwell, who in-turn introduced the Cuban to George McNeil (who 
became a dear friend throughout his life). In New York, Matta and Motherwell expounded about Lorca’s 
duende concept, further inspiring both Lam and McNeil, encouraging them to be “open” to the possibility of 
duende. For reasons explained earlier, Lam often fell short of the duende; but McNeil naturally gravitated 
toward duende. 
the Post-wAr dIffusIon of duende theory In the VIsuAl Arts:
 
 One of Hans Hofmann’s top students was George McNeil, a daring painter and art educator, who si-
milar to Motherwell studied at Columbia University. In fact, McNeil, Franz Kline, Grace Hartigan, Willem 
and Elaine de Kooning and Motherwell were often together at AAAA, NYU’s Art Club, and occasionally on 
the doorsteps of The League, where Motherwell often pushed the conversation toward duende theory. 
 In the late-1940s and 1950s, during numerous stays in Cuba, George McNeil often discussed duende 
with his friend the Cuban Surrealist Wifredo Lam. Consistent with the obvious duende that pervades Van 
Gogh’s late “colorful” works, both McNeil and Lam were artists that often used a bright “high-key” palette 
to reach duende’s emotive intensity and depth. However, the use of bright hue to attain duende requires a 
rare (nearly impossible) contradictory capability; an ability to utilize high-key chromatic-colors as though 
bright and intense hues were “somehow” in some way identical to shades of black. We find this duende phe-
nomenon in countless late-works by Van Gogh (e.g., The Café Terrace at Arles, Starry Night, The Church at 
Auvers, and of course The Wheatfield with Crows, etc. etcetera). This same ironic gift is evident throughout 
the artworks of George McNeil and Wifredo Lam. McNeil and Lam’s breathtaking artistic achievements 
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and colorful marvels are a direct result of Matta’s and Motherwell’s zealous advocacy of the duende. Never-
theless, Motherwell (unlike McNeil and Lam) always relied on simply “black-as-black” within his black-&-
-white ventures into duende that are instantly recognizable, i.e., in At Five in the Afternoon; and throughout 
the Elegies to the Spanish Republic series. Among the Abstract Expressionist, Motherwell was considered 
the group’s foremost “intellectual,” authoring scores of critical articles on contemporary art, as well as pu-
blishing two celebrated books: Dada Painters & Poets (1951) and Max Ernst: Beyond Painting (1948). He 
was well versed in all the different 20th Century aesthetic theories; but, primarily applied duende theory 
when forging his best known pieces. 
 As most second-generation (“2nd-Wave”) Abstract Expressionists, McNeil held Motherwell in high 
esteem and listened intently to his theoretical discourses on art. Like both Lorca and Motherwell, McNeil 
had studied at Columbia and formulated his own unique theory of art, which in many ways parallels Lorca’s 
duende theory. McNeil believed that art should not strive for pure-beauty; he always asserted that, “In a 
comparison between Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh to determine whose art is greater, or more im-
portant, the Dutchman is by far the better painter, because his art has some shit or grit in it!” According to 
McNeil, art works that have things out of kilter, askew, or ugly are always preferable, enduring, memorable, 
and of greater value. He argued, “Between the pure beauty of Piet Mondrian’s De Stijl and the push/pull of 
Hans Hofmann, the German is the greater artist!” The same is true in sculpture, according to McNeil, “Be-
tween the elegance of Brancusi’s Bird in Flight, or any existential figure sculpted by Alberto Giacometti, the 
Italo-Swiss’s work is superior, because his art has shit or grit in it!” “A great work of art must have shit or 
grit in it!” Whenever he spoke about art, these were the brash, duendesque, and heroic insights that George 
McNeil persistently imparted, which he always delivered in his unique unassuming, humble, shy, gentle and 
apologetic manner, stating as a preamble in a soft mild-mannered voice, “Please, don’t listen to me, because 
what do I know about art; I am an old man . . . please, don’t take me seriously, but, between Claude Monet 
and Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutchman is the better painter, because his art has some shit or grit in it!” This 
essay (which you are reading) acknowledges that theenigmatic artistic quality that McNeil surmised to be 
either “shit” or “grit” is 100% indistinguishable from the duende. 
 The distinction between an artist that has “grit,” “shit,” or ugliness and one that has mere “beauty” 
is similar to the artistic differentiation between what constitutes an artist of genius and what constitutes an 
artist of talent; an aesthetic duality first argued and developed by German art historian Max J. Friedländer 
in the 1930s, through which he explicitly identified certain artists as “fighters” while others he deemed “vic-
tors,” regarding their disparate approach to art and art-making. For Friedlander, “fighters” are artist with 
overwhelming genius but little talent (i.e., Bosch, El Greco, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Goya, Van 
Gogh, Bocklin or Ryder), while “victors” have much more talent than genius (i.e., Memling, Carracci, Reni,
Mengs, Bouguereau, Gérôme, Wyeth or Norman Rockwell). Everything in art comes easily to the “victors,” 
while “fighters” fight to create, struggling with everything and everyone, including themselves, existence, 
nature, the universe or the duende. Occasionally, a few great artists have equal portions of genius and talent, 
such as Michelangelo or Raphael. Yet, even among those two giants; it is clear that the Florentine is the 
fighter, while the Umbrian is the victor. 
 Today, many artists follow Motherwell’s or McNeil’s heroic paths and examples, wisely pursuing 
the radical and profound aesthetic views described throughout Lorca’s essay on the duende, in order to 
enhance or inform their work with this dark enigmatic and extraordinary inspiration. Throughout the first 
decade of the 21st Century, Sergio Villamizar (a New York City artist of Colombian ancestry) is one of the 
best contemporary advocates of duende; his art harbors a tough-minded charcoal black virulent duende that 
potently surges through his exceptional, formidable, fierce and dangerous imagery. Both in his woodcut 
prints and his large magnetic photo-collages, Villamizar’s ominous imagery is hyper-intense, drastically 
invigorating, and eye catching.
 Exactly as Lorca described, for Villamizar, duende is a ‘natural,’ integral, and organic condition that 
haunts his art. From September 25 until November 5, 2010, he was part of a groundbreaking exhibition on 
DUENDE at Passaic County Community College’s Broadway & LRC Galleries, exhibiting in a two-man 
show (with José Rodeiro) curated by Jane Haw (PCCC’s Gallery Director)(8). 
 Unlike Villamizar, Rodeiro (whose atypical attempts at duende are, for the most part, rare or occa-
sional; although he is an artist who has used bright hue to attain duende, e.g., his Sunflowers image painted 
only in varying bright yellow hues; is nevertheless infused with duende, which harkens back to the colorful-
-duende phenomenon, which was realized by Van Gogh, Wifredo Lam, and George McNeil. In this light, 
it is important to know that Rodeiro was both a student and an employee of Dr. George McNeil (Director 
of Graduate Art History, Pratt Institute, NYC), for whom Rodeiro taught courses in Medieval Art, Renais-
sance Art, and Baroque & Rococo art history in mid-1970s. Nevertheless, despite Rodeiro’s occasional 
grappling with duende; historically, his art is mostly muse-oriented or even at times angelic. Hence, what 
made this fall 2010 PCCC Broadway & LRC Galleries show remarkable was the visual dichotomy between 
Villamizar’s “true,” natural, and inherent duende and Rodeiro’s odd, awkward, and reticent duende. Also, 
important is the fact that when Rodeiro received his (1986-87) individual Visual Artist Fellowship from 
the National Endowment for the Arts; one of the jurors on the NEA selection committee was Robert Mo-
therwell. 
 Plus, in 1972, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Motherwell was exhibiting in a solo-show, dis-
playing only his most recent late-works, which were thin lined thin-painted Matisse-like rectangles consu-
med by Post-Painterly Painting, Large Color-field Painting, and an overt desire for sheer Beauty. In these 
hyper-linear, mild, colorful, pleasant, lovely, sloppy late-works, Motherwell had sadly strayed far far away 
from the duende, which had dominated his finest works throughout his distinguished career. Sitting pensive 
on a large backless upholstered sofa-bench in the first room of the exhibit was George McNeil, dishearte-
ned — shaking his downcast head and whispering to himself, catching sight of one of his Pratt MFA can-
didates (José Rodeiro), he said, “Sometimes an artist that you admire your whole life can lose his way and 
disappoint you.” Then McNeil abruptly turned away from the enormous bright-hued Matisseian canvases 
(quietly muttering, “Where is the shit?” “Where is the grit?” “Where is the shit?” “Where is the grit?”) as 
he walked dejectedly toward the grand staircase cascading down to 5th Avenue heading back to his dark-
-red brick combined studio-home by the Brooklyn Navy Yard to burn-paint his duende-filled expressionistic 
images with an acetylene blowtorch. 
 In the early-1990s Villamizar learned about the duende via conversations with Rodeiro in Jersey 
City, NJ. Meanwhile, Rodeiro first heard about the duende phenomenon, in the late 1960s, while strolling 
beneath reams of dark dangling Spanish-moss in Plant Park (Tampa, Florida), walking astride of Dr. Ni-
comedes Suárez-Araúz (the acclaimed Bolivian poet and aesthetic theorist), Alan Britt (currently, one of 
America’s most published poets), and Charles Hayes (the brilliant Hudson Valley poet/photographer), Ro-
deiro learned about duende from American poet Duane Locke. Also, in the 1980s in Ybor City (Tampa, 
Florida) both Suárez-Araúz and Rodeiro had the good fortune to know Malcolm Morley (the true father of 
both American “Superrrealism” and American Young-Turk “Neo-Expressionism”). Morley knew about Ben 
Belitt’s translation of Lorca’s duende theory through his first-wife Fran Bull, who was familiar with Ben 
Belitt at Bennington, Vermont, during her student years. In 1955, Belitt translated Lorca’s Duende essay 
as part of his editing of Garcia Lorca’s Poet in New York, Grove Press (NYC, NY), which was read (and 
“carefully studied”) by all of the above artists and poets. 
 Important to Rodeiro is the fact that Morley in his expressionistic imagery often revealed a powerful 
duende evoked by brilliant virtuoso applications of bright pigment like Van Gogh, Chaïm Soutine, McNeil, 
and Lam. In the late-1960s and early-1970s, Morley attained fame doing “Muse” infested Superrealist 
(Photo-Realist) works, which Dalí cleverly dubbed “Sharp Sybaritic Realism.” Dali predicted that Morley 
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would both outgrow and eventually destroy Superrealism. Morley did destroy it; by inventing Neo-Expres-
sionism. 
 Ten years prior to meeting Morley; Rodeiro and Suárez were both pursuing doctoral degrees at 
Ohio University, when a Spanish dance troupe performed at OU. One of the dancers in the company was 
named Laura Garcia-Lorca. So after the performance, Rodeiro and Suarez stayed behind and asked the 
stage manager to speak with her. She came to the foot of the stage, and graciously and generously revealed 
that her father was Federico’s brother: Francisco. Today, she runs The Federico García Lorca Foundation. 
A few months after meeting the gifted niece of Garcia-Lorca, Suarez and Rodeiro heard a rumor that Pablo 
Neruda had been assassinated in Chile. Immediately, both thought of the political assassination of Lorca 
under similar circumstances thirty-seven years earlier. Soon, little-by-little the nefarious facts surrounding 
Neruda’s death emerged. 
 Such as, according to Manuel Araya (Pablo Neruda’s personal assistant), while the poet was at Santa 
Maria Clinic in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile (on September 23, 1973), seeking medical papers in order 
to justify hisdeparture to Mexico City for treatment of his early on-set prostate cancer, Neruda was forcibly 
administered a lethal overdose of Dipirona analgesic (injected into his stomach), precipitating a heart atta-
ck. Just before lapsing into a coma, Neruda called Araya moments after the incident and informed him. As 
Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) students, Suárez and Rodeiro learned that the Chilean poet had died; while 
they sat in the audience during a panel discussion about artists as political advocates. The panel consisted 
of Robert Bly, Joyce Carol Oates, and Leslie Fiedler. It was Bly who informed the audience that his friend 
Neruda had been murdered. Bly was one of the top English translators of Neruda, as well as Lorca. Soon, 
logically, the discussion turned to Lorca’s assassination in 1936. 
 In the 21st Century, beyond Morley, Villamizar, and Rodeiro, other significant contemporary artists 
address duende in their art. For example, Virna Vargas and Charles Hayes and others have employed duen-
de, either intrinsically and constantly (like Villamizar) or from time-to-time obliquely (like Rodeiro). And 
so, the brilliant Latina artist Virna Vargas (in her prints and drawings) and the Whitman-esque artist Charles 
Hayes (in his photographs) manifest a duende that is distinct and potent. For example, in her assorted 2-D 
works, Vargas realizes dramatic and highly emotive imagery predicated by her virtuoso use of vibrant and 
sublime black-shades. Correspondingly, Charles Hayes, a Hudson River Valley shamanic artist, has been 
known to chase full-moon(s) [(as well as crescent moon(s) or half-moon(s)] with his camera, ecstatically 
ambushing the moon as “she” danced camouflaged within brambles. 
 Among the most prominent 21st Century American practitioners of duende are the following artists: 
Sergio Villamizar with his authentic and authoritative duende’s “duende;” Virna Vargas with her black-
-shade, sublime, and virtuoso imagery; Charles Hayes with his Moonspun-images, which take duende to 
another level of profundity.” Also of consequence is Hugo Morales’s Goya-esque Silent Scream Series, 
where he depicts a purely authentic duende. The Brazilian master Duda Penteado’s initial imagery in the 
Glocallica Series alludes to Alechinsky, Motherwell, Picasso, Rothko and Gorky. Several contemporary 
masters manifest the duende in their art, including: Susan Rothenberg, Josephine Barreiro, Christie Deve-
reaux (in her Super Storm Sandy Series), Emanoel Araujo (within his monumental jet-black Afro-Brazilian 
sculptures), Gabriel Navar (who is haunted by the inimitable duende that lurks behind Octavio Paz’s poetry, 
Juan Rulfo’s novels, and José G. Posada’s sarcastic comic-illustrations), also important are these brilliant 
visual artists: Jesus Rivera, Olga M. Bautista, Adrienne Wheeler, George Nelson Preston, and Chuck Plosky 
(in his Abuelita piece) to name a few. 
the duende In sculPture?:
 
 Duende is somewhat rare in “2-D” art; but, it is considered extremely sparse, scarce, or almost ex-
tinct in “3-D” art, as well as “4-D” art. In most art historically valid examples of “3-D” or “4-D” art (i.e., 
sculpture, architecture, ceramics, installation-art or crafts, etc.), the Andalusian duende is hardly perceptible 
in those heavy-duty and steadfast art-forms, and this artistic dearth (or “paucity”) is probably why duende is 
so rare in “2-D” art, and even rarer (or “extraordinary”) in “3-D” art, as well as “4-D” art, although it is less 
rare (or easier to detect) in “5-D” art, i.e., symphonies, operas, flamenco, poetry-recitals, play-performances 
(acting), music, poetry, or any art done at the speed-of-life, which unifies or combines life’s natural gra-
vitation, gesticulation, nuance, inflections, and variations within Earth’s polar-electromagnetism (in short, 
utilizing the natural dynamic flux of transcendent life-energy: elan vital). In all dimensions beyond and 
including 5-D, the duende is at play. In fact, in all probability, the duende (as an embodiment of Death, 
aka “Dark Energy”) is most likely apparent within current “new” extra-dimensional String Theory models, 
currently revealing additional unforeseen dimensions. These “new” non-empirical extra-dimensions were 
discovered in the late-20th Century by scientists attempting to explore two puzzling enigmas: “cold” Dark 
Matter and “hot” Dark Matter. As a result, several “new” abstract dimensions (beyond the original em-
pirical five) have been identified, conjectured, and are currently being examined. Sooner or later, human 
creativity and imagination will inevitably need to “transform” these new dimensions into art. Importantly, 
perhaps, Duende Art already has; e.g., maybe, this explains Lorca’s odd doodles, or Wolfgang Paalen’s and 
Roberto Matta’s bizarre paintings. 
 According to Lorca, the duende employs basic elements or things; rising-up from the soul of the 
feet, moving immanently from ground-level upward. Furthermore, in his Duende Essay, Lorca informs us 
that, “Whatever has black . . . has duende! There is no greater truth in art!” Black is the unity of all colors; 
both Manet and Picasso saw black as a quintessential shade for enhancing a hue’s innate chroma; e.g., adja-
cent to a dark black, a blue appears bluer, and a red redder, etc. In the same way that black is comprised of
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all hues; so presumably is the First Dimension (“1-D”) surreptitiously and covertly comprised of all dimen-
sions as conjectured in Einstein’s The General Theory of Relativity. As a consequence of operating within 
the confines of death, the duende seeks extreme flatness: a pulsating horizontality of one flat dimension (“1-
D”). Einstein’s realization in The General Theory of Relativity that gravity causes all flatness to inevitably 
curve (as part of the phenomenon of a curved spacetime) proves that “1-D” flatness clearly contains more 
than just “1-D” flatness. For example, since the 1990s, several Flat Space String Theories propose as many 
as 26 different dimensions, especially within the Bosonic model. Beyond the original five-dimensions, all 
fundamental Superstring Theories, [(i.e., the metaphysical “M-theory” (the “Membrane Theory” aka “Ma-
gic,” “Mystery,” and/or “Mother Theory”))] propose at least 10 or 11 additional dimensions. Yet, almost 
in contradiction to the extra-dimensional realms inherent in his Duende Theory, Lorca (in accord with the 
duende’s requirement of ease, genuineness, and effortless simplicity) prefers Saint Augustine’s clear-cut 
delineation of three sequential stages marking temporal demarcations: “Past,” “Present,” and “Future,” even 
though Augustine argues in Book XI of The Confession that none of these distinctions actually exist. And, 
through voluntary self-deception, human-beings conveniently use these non-existent delineations (“Past,” 
“Present,” and “Future”) to differentiate moments in time. In fact, Lorca’s entire theory hinges on Augus-
tinian temporality with its overemphasis on the “present,” instead of the fluid flowing melodic durational 
temporal theories of Spinoza, Hume, Bergson, Husserl, T. S. Eliot, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, which unify 
time, by fusing each moment together as one. Did Augustine learn about “Time” from one of his Manicha-
ean professor at the University of Carthage in 372 CE ? In fact, at that time and afterward, the re-establish 
town of Carthage (with its Manichaean “think-tank” (described by Augustine) stood exactly on the caravan 
route, which guided the Gypsies into Andalusia. 
 By and large, Lorca’s theory is, for the most part, antithetical to “things” that are too solid, immo-
vable, or sculptural. Almost certainly, an Andalusian emaciated floating Saturnal phantom (“the duende”) 
would find it extremely difficult to pester or confront brawny artists perspiring to make aesthetically gra-
tifying cumbersome