It is the only hermitage in the world painted by one single artist: 1,150 square metres of frescoes (300 more than Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel), reproducing in allegory the context of the Hermitage of Our Lady of Succour. The superhuman power required to take on such a task has been faith itself.

It was the now distant day of 2 August 1994 when Evaristo Guerra fi rst stood before the Bishop of Malaga with a few sketches. “Right from the outset they liked my project, above all my idea of painting the old crafts and trades of my village.”

In the summer of 1996 he taook up his challenge, and over the course of the next seven years Evaristo dedicated each summer season to the hermitage. “There was a time when I was so desperate that I even asked Our Lady to grant me the health to complete it, and at least one month to enjoy it. Now I hope that she doesn’t take me too literally...,” the painter says jokingly.

Following a lengthy process, Evaristo won the support of the Andalusian Tourism Board, the Malaga Foundation, the Cajamar Savings Bank and the Local Council of Vélez-Málaga, which was committed to his project from the very beginning. And so since 2003 the painter has been working at the site for around eight months a year. “In one year I made as much progress as I would have done in three,” he happily declares. “Without this support I would not have been able to fi nish it.” He also says that his success would have been far from assured “without the patience of my wife and my family”. Evaristo, with his murals, has succeeded in settling a debt with the past: “I received my fi rst Communion here. I was the only child in the village to do so at the hermitage, and in a borrowed suit, no less. I remember that I was in tears as I came here, because I wanted to go to the Church of St John with all the other boys”.

The chemistry between the church and the artist was complete: “the hermitage spoke to me, it used to ask things of me. If you look now at the fi rst sketches I showed to the Bishop of Malaga, you can see that the overall concept has been preserved, although I have made a few changes as I have gradually worked on the walls”.

If one thing stands out about Evaristo Guerra it is his persistent and sincere gratitude: “when I thought my strength would fail me, when I felt short of emotional and physical energy, the life force of the people who used to come by here helped me a lot”. For the artist, “a painting can fi nish you off, can grab you by the throat and strangle you. Many people say that painting is relaxing, but not for me, not at all. I feel tense, it makes me feel alive, but also responsible for my creation”.

Just a few more touches left to do (the selfportrait of the artist on one panel of the wall, along with a few other fi nishing brushstrokes), and Evaristo Guerra’s remarkable mural project will be complete. The living colour of the walls and ceilings immerses us in the naïf symbolic universe of Evaristo. The golds, blues, greens, purples... the colours illuminate the interior of the hermitage to the point where they blend and merge with the natural light streaming in through the stained glass windows.

The Virgin Mary, from her niche, looks out on the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Tejeda and the land sloping down to the fertile fields of the flood plain of Vélez, and the mouth of the river in the bay of Torre de Mar. The external landscape is here dreamt, given shape from within. A magical illusion created by a painter-poet who decided to decorate this bucolic setting with the crafts and trades he saw as a child, now practically non-existent: potters, esparto grass workers, olive farmers, churro sellers, bakers (represented by the artist himself, as his father worked in a bakery), sugar cane harvesters...

Above, in the upper section, towards the level of the sky on the ceiling, Evaristo has depicted various scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary.


A Royal Opening

Evaristo’s ambition is for his work to be officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Sofía “since she has shown a great love of art”. For the painter, “it represents many years of dedication and effort, and I think it deserves it”, and he lives in the hope that the royal family “might be able to find a free date in their diary, sooner or later”. Evaristo admits that no one was more surprised than him when the scaffolding was taken down. “I couldn’t believe it. I was so immersed in my work that I hadn’t seen the bigger picture, I couldn’t visualise its true scale.”

When one finishes a work of this scope the sensations are many, but the artist describes the feeling as “neither fulfilment nor emptiness”. The fact of the matter is that “if it were not for Humberto García del Corral (from the Vélez-Málaga Council) who took my scaffolding away, I would still be stuck up there”. One has to remember that the whole process has taken more than a decade “and during that time people change, and their vision of things changes too, so I always had the temptation to make the odd modification here or there”. For Evaristo Guerra “works get signed because you have to sign them, not because you feel they are finished. I will always have that doubt inside of me”.

The local artist now feels he has fulfilled “a dream to leave this legacy to Our Lady of Succour. A legacy which I also want to be for all the inhabitants of Vélez. I hope that they will take care of it and look after it as their own, forever”.

The painter poses next to the Hermitage of Our Lady of Succour.



The walls of the hermitage shine with the landscape outside: the mountain, the valley, the coast... Below, the painter caresses the portrait of his wife, a key figure in the long process of completing the work.



From ground to ceiling and from heaven to earth, Evaristo has recreated an idealised universe of landscapes, crafts and customs.



Above, artist Evaristo Guerra points out one of the few fi gures still to be fi nished off: his own self-portrait.