Miguel

I first met Miguel on Third Avenue in front of the British Consulate where we were both picketing for the release of Bobby Sands; later, I met him again, also on Third Avenue, at a corner pizzeria when he handed me a slice of pizza and I handed him $1.00. When he gave me change, he held my hand a bit longer than necessary. Later, we bumped into each other, again on Third Avenue in P. J. Clark's at 55th street, where he asked me out.

He had recently come from Uruguay with the intention of studying art but with no notion of how or where to start. He spoke almost no English, just a few words to get by. "No problem” and "Okay” were his favorites. We spent our first dates visiting restaurants where the wait staff spoke Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian (languages Miguel spoke fluently), and who would translate for us. In one Portuguese restaurant on 14th Street, we ran into a waiter who was also a student of mine at Queens College. Miguel and I were trying to have a political discussion, and this young man sat down and acted as our interpreter, until his mother, the owner of the restaurant, chased him back to work

Early in his time at the Art Students League, Miguel took some of his Couples paintings to various galleries in downtown Manhattan looking for representation. One of the galleries was OK Harris, owned by Irving Karp. Karp told Miguel that his paintings were similar in style to those of Edward Hopper. Miguel responded that he didn't know Hopper, and that he had recently come to New York from Uruguay, which led Karp to call him the Uruguayan Hopper.

When Miguel returned home we looked up Hopper on my computer, and we both agreed to the similarity in mood. Others at the Art Students League also noted the resemblance, citing Hopper's Room in New York and Morning Sun, as examples. I am not suggesting that Miguel is the second coming of Hopper or that his work is the equivalent of Hopper's, but I do see that both Miguel and Hopper had similar painterly sensibilities. The words used to describe Hopper's work can also be used to describe many of Miguel's paintings, particularly in the Couples series. Loneliness, isolation, and detachment imbue the Couples paintings, but one can also feel the loneliness in other of his paintings as well. Miguel's self portraits are an example.

Although there are similarities in Hopper's and Miguel's paintings, there are no similarities in personality. Hopper is described by others as “secretive, shy, quiet, introspective, and conservative.” Miguel was the opposite—open, sociable, and liberal. He was without rival in his affability, warmth, kindness, and his outward love of his fellow man. Everyone loved him, most of all me. When we lived in Assisi and walked out together, just about everyone we passed, other than the tourists—and even some of those, would greet him with a Ciao Michele or would stop to chat.

Why then are the paintings of someone so sociable in life so dark and disturbing on canvas?

One of Hopper's repeated quotes is that "art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.” I do not know whether the darkness in Miguel’s paintings came from grief, memory, politics, exile, or from some private place in him I could never fully enter. He was a steadfast liberal in his beliefs and found the world a shabby, unhappy place. I do not believe that he found the truth he sought, but he left the world a better place, and he left behind a body of paintings one cannot easily look away from.

Grace Brophy 2026