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Arte Asturias |
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Three Generations of Asturian-American Painters |
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Emilio Fernández Alvarez (1894 - 1964)Honnie Amor Wagner (1927 - )Art Zoller Wagner (1952 - )We're a family of realist painters. We don't know how far back the tradition goes, but according to one family story, 9 year-old Emilio helped his uncle or grandfather paint the ceiling of a church in Avilés, Asturias, Spain. Thus, at the very least, the thread extends over more than a century and four or five generations. Emilio Fernández Alvarez (on the left in the photo above) was the father of Honnie Amor Wagner and grandfather of Art Zoller Wagner. Honnie (center) is the mother of Art (right). The artistic connections between the three generations weren't clear to us until in 1993 when Honnie and Art restored one of Emilio's large paintings. Nearly fifty years earlier, Emilio had painted an altarpiece for Mrs. Lucille Keough as a memorial for her first husband, who had been killed in WWII in 1944. Honnie had helped her father install the painting in 1945 over the altar of the Trinity United Methodist Church, Brushy Fork, West Virginia.
Art Zoller Wagner and Honnie Amor Wagner restoring a painting by Emilio Fernández Alvarez, "Christ Knocking at Heart's Door," Trinity United Methodist Church, Brushy Fork, West Virginia, restored 1993We worked for days at Brushy Fork cleaning, repairing, and retouching Emilio's reinterpretation of "Christ Knocking at Heart's Door." This project required such careful attention to detail that we looked much more closely at his work than we had before. In this way, we gained a greater understanding of Emilio's methods and abilities. Although Emilio had died many years before, it felt as though the three of us had become a team. Next >> Learn more about us: |
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