Benjamin Cañas Retrospective at The Annex!
Los Bailarines y los Bebedores, Benjamin Cañas
I’m not sure if I told you about my new plan for my Central American art collection.
The original idea was to house it in a museum at Paradise Palms. That was, and still is, the dream location.
But we’ve been struggling against an explicable pushback from government bureaucrats that apparently see it, not as a significant cultural gift to Palm Beach County, but as an opportunity to dig into their tome of rules and regulations to not just restrict its amenities and the public’s access to them, but to extract from the foundation hundreds of thousands of dollars in land seizures and additional taxes.
I remain hopeful that sanity will eventually prevail. In the meantime, we are moving forward in another way. Instead of housing and showing the entire collection in one place, we will be producing four three-month-long exhibitions of individual artists from the collection on the second floor of the cigar club.
Side entrance to the gallery, which is on the second floor
The space was designed to be used for exercising and training Jiu Jitsu, but we have located those activities to the garage bays of the first floor.
The majority of the second floor has been refitted as a viewing gallery for the exhibitions. You can see it in operation in the photo below.
Benjamin Cañas retrospective at The Annex in Delray Beach, March 30 to June 30
Our first show is a retrospective of the great Salvadoran surrealist Benjamin Cañas, whose best work (produced from the mid 1970s until his death in 1987) consisted primarily of what has been described as a “highly original figuration, which fused a technique of great details (as found in Flemish painting) and dream-like compositions.”
I’ve been collecting Cañas for about 20 years. It’s been a slow and sometimes difficult process because, even when I started, his importance as a Central American modernist, was already known. In the early years, all I could get my hands on were pen and ink drawings and medium-sized unfinished canvasses in oil. However, thanks primarily to the research, travel, and sociability of SS, my partner in the art collection business, we were eventually able to meet collectors that owned his very good pieces, and then, finally, meet and befriend his daughter who oversaw the remaining pieces of his estate.
The piece below was my first major purchase. It’s called The Critic. (As you can see, Cañas had mixed feelings about critics.) We’ve acquired several more works of this quality since then, but this one still my favorite.
The Critic, Benjamin Cañas
Update on my Weight Loss
Since you didn’t ask, I’m going to update you on my mission to lose weight. I was hitting the scales at 225+ when I started four months ago. I’m down to 185 now. Gio thinks I’ve gone too far. And she’s right in that, as with most who lose weight using semaglutide, about 40% of my weight loss was muscle. My current goal is to get back some of those 14 pounds by lifting weights and/or wrestling seven days a week and taking in at least 100 grams of protein a day.
As for the other effects of losing the weight…
Despite the loss in strength, I’m doing way better with my grappling because I am considerably more agile and active. My cardio is much better, too. I notice that when I climb stairs, I’m no longer winded after the first flight. Another plus: I can keep up with K, walking beside her along the beach or running with her to get to an airport gate on time.
As for medications and blood counts, I’m happy to say that I’m no longer taking blood pressure medication or statins. Most days, my blood pressure is at or below 110 over 70. My lipid panels, while not perfect, are pretty good. Other heart/stroke related indicators – including my triglycerides, troponin, hs-CRP, lipoprotein(a), and apolipoprotein B levels – are looking good.
As I (hopefully) put back some of the muscle I lost, I’m weaning myself off the semaglutide. My max dosage was never high at 0.75. Now it’s down to 0.5. So long as I don’t balloon up suddenly and stay under 200 (my original goal), I’ll bring the dosage down to 0.25. And then, who knows? Maybe I’ll wean myself from it completely.
So, unless something very regressive happens, this should be my final report on the health issue you never asked about.
