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The pencil has a special power
 Danish artist Jørn
Bie (www.jorn-bie.dk)
lived and worked in Guatemala for 17 years starting in 1978. During the
early years of his visit the country was torn by the most vicious period
of the civil war, which he documented in drawings and woodcuttings.
"Being a traveling artist is something very special - it's different from
traveling with a camera - it's as if the pencil has a special power",
he says.
Click on the images below
When local people told Jørn Bie about massacres and killings he
went to those places to draw what was left. Indeed he started traveling
across the Guatemala to document important events realizing that exiled
journalists and photographers could not do the job. Amnesty International
published some of his work in reports on human rights abuses in the country.
- Naturally, I've often seen the army or
the paramilitary groups persecute people. But they've only arrested
me once or twice for being on the spot or for painting the event,
but they never confiscated my drawings - that's really strange - they
never confiscated them - nor did they break my pencils or things like
that.... they only told me not to go there or not to do it again.
- During all these years the population
always treated me very kindly. It seems that there's something special
about the fact that I stood there painting among all these mourning people
- people who were in a situation, which we would normally characterize
as having passed the limit ... They felt like I was making them immortal,
like they were part of this - that this event was real... And the grief
they felt was so profound that sometimes I felt like they were even thanking
me....
Jørn Bie has selected a collection
of 10 drawings and woodcutting for publication on Para Nunca Olvidar.
Most of these have never been shown in an international setting before.
Lotte Holmen asked the artist to talk about the art. Next to each piece
youíll hear his voice in Danish and may read a transcript.
During his 17 years in Guatemala
Mr. Bie became closely integrated in the Mayan culture and reached his
original goal for visiting Central America in painting several murals.
In one of the oldest palaces in Antigua, the first conquistador capital
in Guatemala, he created two beautiful murals depicting the life and ways
of Mayan men and women.
The 65 m2 murals were done in 1994-95
the last art he did before leaving the country. Parts of the murals
can be viewed in the Para Nunca Olvidar Education pages under the
heading Campesino in the Illustrations section.
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