Es · En · De

Church and Art

I thought very appropriate from the Holy Father that encounter he had with the artists. And I would say so because of the existing need to “re-establish the friendship between church and artists”. I feel that that friendship between both has never finally ended because Christian artists will always support their Church, because God is above art; but I do think that there has been and there still is a certain distancing, and rather than because of economic problems (let us not forget that in ancient times the Church, and not only during the Renaissance, was the main client of artists and the biggest and best patron), it has been because the Church, and mainly from its upper levels, has left art aside, and has mainly forgotten that art in all its facets is the soul of civilizations, it is the counterpart to the material, and that the Church must have the duty to channel that gift which is art and the instrument which is the artist, towards the Greater praise of the Supreme Creator. The Holy Father John Paul the 2nd already said it in his letter to catholic artists of the 4th of April, 1999; in his first point he talked about the artist as the image of the Creator God and he called to the fecund dialogue of the Church with the artist… John Paul the 2nd also said that society has a need for artists.

Church and art is a couple that must never stop existing.

For me, as an artist, the most direct way to meet God is the process of creation; when you fully devote yourself to Him as an instrument and as the only way to achieve a work that could be called a master work of art.

For the looker of a work of art, meeting God takes place when he observes beauty as another result of the creation of the only Creator which is God.


Jorge Rando, Malaga, September 2009