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Three Generations of Asturian-American Painters
Emilio Fernández Alvarez (1894 - 1964)
Honnie Amor Wagner (1927 - )
Art Zoller Wagner (1952 - )
Realist painting is a family tradition that goes back at least a century and a half and four or five generations. According to one family story, Emilio helped his uncle or grandfather paint the star-studded ceiling of a church in Avilés, Asturias, Spain, when he was only nine years old.
Asturias is an area of “green Spain” on the northern coast. This mountainous region is the home of one of Spain’s traditional Celtic cultures. For millennia, the dominant trades in Asturias have been associated with the sea, cattle, and minerals.
Emilio and his wife emigrated from Spain in 1914, spent three years in La Habana, Cuba, and then arrived in West Virginia in 1917 with two children. Asturian emigration was a common phenomenon in this era. Some left for adventure or to find work because unemployment was high in Asturias. Many emigrated due to punishing labor relations with zinc factory owners in Asturias. Some, like Emilio, left Spain in order to avoid the military draft for a brutal war in Morocco.
Emilio Fernández Alvarez, Vecindad
In the early 20th century, Harrison County, West Virginia had a sizable Asturian immigrant community living in Anmoore, Spelter, and North View. Many of these Asturians had been recruited to work in the zinc smelting industry because they had held similar jobs in Asturias. There were zinc factories in many locations in the United States, including four in West Virginia: first in Anmoore and later in Spelter, Northview, and Moundsville.
Emilio did not work in the zinc industry. He was a painter who earned his living painting businesses and homes, but whose passion was painting religious themes, landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. He straddled two worlds, painting folkloric images that expressed a longing for the life and culture left behind, yet also painting scenes from his new life in West Virginia. Emilio rarely sold his paintings, but preferred to give them to his friends and family. He often displayed seasonal paintings in his home’s front window so that neighbors could enjoy them as they walked past.
Emilio Fernández Alvarez, Backyard
Honnie, Emilio’s daughter, is a retired school teacher who enjoys painting picturesque Spanish scenes. She learned clay and molded sculpture from her father as a child and majored in art at West Virginia University, but suspended her artistic activity when she became a mother. In 1977 she visited her family in Asturias for the first time, meeting cousins, aunts, and uncles she had never known. She was charmed and fascinated by the traditional urban and rural lifestyles of her family in Asturias. Her paintings reflect images captured on film during visits to her ancestral home.
Honnie Amor Wagner, Mercado
Art, Emilio’s grandson, is a clinical social worker. As a child, Art played with his mother and grandfather’s art supplies, explored their books, and absorbed their art, which was displayed in the home. As a young studio artist, Art lived in Spain for two years, visiting his mother’s Asturian family on holidays. He later studied Asturian culture for three summers in the Asturian capital, Oviedo, in order to learn more about the culture his maternal grandparents left behind. These childhood and adult experiences led to his focus on the psychological, relational, and spiritual aspects of añoranza, or longing, through images of the human figure and landscape.
Art Zoller Wagner, Luminous II
This exhibit shows the works of three generations within one immigrant family of realist painters, beginning with an enterprising Spanish immigrant to West Virginia in the early 1900s, continuing with the retrospective reflections expressed by his daughter, and extending to his grandson, whose introspective works explore longing and connection. We offer this visual journey as a metaphor for the multigenerational immigrant experience in West Virginia.
For more information, please visit: www.ArteAsturias.com
