En un sencillo y emocionante acto, el domingo día 1 de diciembre de 2024, en la iglesia del Seminario Redemptoris Mater de Roma, Kiko Argüello, iniciador del Camino Neocatecumenal con Carmen Hernández, recibió la Medalla “Per Artem ad Deum” por su contribución al arte sacro.
The award is given each year by the SacroExpo Association to artists or institutions whose artistic achievements contribute to the development of culture and human spirituality. In particular, it is the only award sponsored by the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
Video of the award ceremony
“New aesthetic in the Church”, Kiko Argüello.
Very good, very good! Thank you. May I say a word?
I thank Cardinal Ryś and Bishop Arrieta for their presence. I thank the ARTESACRA association for this medal “PER ARTEM AD DEUM”, which was an unexpected surprise for me.
When I was 20 years old I received the extraordinary national prize for painting in Spain; shortly after I abandoned my career as a painter to go and meet Christ among the poor; and the Lord gave me a hundredfold, because one day I was called to paint the apse and the stained glass windows of the cathedral of Madrid.
The Lord has done something impressive with Carmen and me. Because the most important of all my artistic work has been to open a Way of Christian Initiation in the whole Church, which is helping so many families and so many young people. This is truly a work of art!
You all know Dostoevsky’s famous phrase in the book “The Idiot”: “Beauty will save the world”. The prince pronounces it and then says that this beauty is Christ. We have seen the work that God has put us into with the Way of Christian Initiation, and we are totally impressed? The Lord has led us to find an aesthetic, some images, a way of expressing the faith with a new type of realization, even of the Church itself.
Beauty will save the world. What beauty? Beauty today is very important because we are in a world where the cult of beauty, of the body, is very important. Beauty is necessary because without it man falls into despair. St. John Paul II had already said that the lack of beauty leads to a lack of hope, to despair and to a great number of suicides among young people.
Beauty, it is studied in philosophy, is one of the transcendentals of being, along with truth and goodness. I would like to relate beauty to pleasure, to aesthetic emotion. I give you a brushstroke on beauty.
If you open the Scriptures, you will see something amazing. In the book of Ecclesiasticus, in chapter 42, we read, “God made all things in pairs, one opposite the other, and He has made nothing evil. Each thing affirms the excellence of the one next to it.” It says that everything God has created sings the excellence of that which is next to it. This is the principle of beauty. The relationship between a thing and that which is next to it. That is why we say that the deepest content of beauty is love. For example, a landscape: the softness of the blue sky sings the beauty of the gray or white clouds; the roughness of the trees sings the hardness of the rocks; the river below sings the beauty of the nearby beach. Everything sings the beauty of what is next to it.
In what relationship? This is the point. If the relationship of love is right, if what is next to it sings well, then beauty appears immediately. We could make a very long and beautiful conference about this, but I want to talk about Jesus Christ, because all this is linked to Jesus Christ. Because Dostoyevsky says that beauty is Christ, in what sense? Beauty always produces an aesthetic emotion, that is, pleasure. Beauty and pleasure, as if God wants to show with beauty that he loves us, that he loves us, that’s why everything is beautiful.
The Jews talk a lot about beauty. God has created man. He created Adam and Eve. You know that Adam has given names to animals showing his knowledge and he has not found a helper like him. Then God has taken a rib and built a woman. The Jews say that the word “build” is already an artistic word, to create art. All tradition says that there has never been a more beautiful woman than the first Eve. Adam, when he saw her, was impressed: “This one is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. I will call her iššah, because she was taken from man”, iššah in Hebrew, ‘varona’ (woman) in Spanish.
When Moses takes the people and leads them to Mount Sinai, God appears and says “Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad, I am the one” and “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart”. God appears as a husband. God is love. They say that Moses presents to God the assembly, as God has presented Eve before Adam. For she will be God’s wife. The prophet Hosea will speak of the bridegroom of Israel and makes a parallel between Genesis and this moment of the covenant. But, attention, while the first Eve appears all beautiful, Israel comes from Egypt, comes from idolatry, where they have been in slavery and are full of discord, full of the lame, the blind. Because idols enslave you, they were a people of slaves. God, the rabbis say, transforms this people, this assembly, he says that there are no longer lame, because they all walked, there are no longer deaf, because they all heard the word and the people of Israel camped, in singular, not in plural: not that they camped, but that they camped. It means that they had become one. God could not give the Torah to a people of slaves, he builds a prophetic assembly that announces the new messianic times.
This theme of the beauty of the assembly of Israel will be developed throughout Rabbinism through many midrash. Christ knew these midrash. When John’s disciples are presented to our Lord Jesus, they ask, “Are you the Messiah, or should we wait for another?” Listen to what Christ answers, “Tell John: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear.” Why does he say this? Because they were already waiting for the Messiah as the one who would organize not only the people of Israel, but the new humanity. A new humanity.
Just as Christ has done for us! He has made us hear his word, he has opened our ears. He opened our eyes, as he did with the blind man. Christ made some clay with his saliva and applied it to the eyes of the blind man. And the blind man saw the love of God, who gave him his sight. The same thing he has done with us through Christian initiation. The word of God, which is like saliva, prophetically illuminates our poverty, our sins. He makes clay and puts it before our eyes. He puts our sins before us with that clay. And then he tells us: “Wash yourself”. The most difficult thing is to consider ourselves sinners, this is not done without the saliva, the word of Christ. And all our sins have been forgiven. Now we are no longer slaves. We have seen the love for us sinners.
Indeed: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, they walk helping their neighbor, the lepers are cleansed. Christ has come, he is the sign that the savior of the world has arrived, the one who makes of us a new creation. There is a first creation and Israel conceives the covenant as a new creation. The Messiah comes who makes with us a new covenant, a new creation.
This new creation is described in Revelation, when it speaks of the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. And it speaks of beauty. All resplendent like a bride, like a bride. Beauty! It is very important. Today we are in a time when we speak of globalization. There is an image of the world which is Babylon, which is the great prostitute of the Apocalypse.
But over against Babylon there is another city: the heavenly Jerusalem, which is from heaven, clothed in white as a bride, clothed with good works, clothed in bright linen. There is a work in front of Babylon. God is calling us to build the beauty of Christ. It is the body of Christ that will save the world. And what is this beauty? The new Jerusalem: all have become beautiful because Christ has clothed them with his holiness and the Christian community appears: the Church, all resplendent, which is the Lamb that overcomes the beast, this beauty will save the world. The world is waiting for the Christians. They are waiting to see these men who see the love of God, when people do not see the love of God anywhere. They are waiting for these who walk to announce the Gospel like the poor. They are waiting for these who listen to the Word, who love one another, who are of one heart: “Love one another, as I have loved you, by this love they will know that you are my disciples”. A beauty appears who is Christ.
In the tradition of the Church there is a garden in Eden, there is also a second garden on Mount Sinai, where the top appears as a tree that bears fruit, which is the Torah, but there is a third garden. There is the garden of Eden and the garden of Revelation, where the new Jerusalem appears, where there is a tree of life that bears eternal fruit. But there is a fourth garden: Golgotha. There is the garden where Christ was crucified. In that garden there is a tomb, there is a risen Christ, there is a new gardener who is Christ, new Adam, there is a woman who comes from prostitution, who is called Mary Magdalene and when she sees him she says: “Rabbuni”, she goes to embrace him, but Christ says: “Noli me tangere”, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father”. This text: “Do not touch me!” is very important, because it is related to the new Jerusalem. “Go and proclaim that I ascend to the Father, my Father and your Father; my God and your God.” He gives him the announcement of the Kerygma, he is going to perform an immense work. Christ takes human nature and brings it to the Holy Trinity.
St. Paul says that in creation there is a mirror, an epiphany of God’s love for us, through beauty. There is something in nature that impresses you, there is its beauty, there is a kind of gentleness, a kind of obedience. What is man? It is a becoming, it is a project, it is a prodigy. Man! Man is a prodigy. We are a project in constant realization, that is to say, in constant precariousness. We have no right to take away from man the possibility of realizing himself as God has created him, because he is a project in constant realization.
St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, affirms that Christ died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. This is the vision of man according to Revelation, this is Christian anthropology: man, a slave of sin, is obliged to offer everything to himself, precisely because he is a slave, he has lost the dimension of beauty that is love, the coming out of himself in order to love the other. The work of salvation consists in wrenching man from this curse by restoring to him the beauty of love.
For this man we are trying to create a new type of parish; we make parishes with a mystical crown where heaven is present, with the most important mysteries of our faith. Today’s Church does not have a defined aesthetic…. This has pushed us, in a certain sense, to look for an aesthetic. In Madrid we have built a parish with a golden roof, with white stone and glass, with a catechumenium: a group of rooms facing a central square, with a fountain. On the first floor there are all the social services and upstairs, on another floor, there are all the rooms of each community, etc.
I was talking about beauty. Every reform of the Church has inevitably brought with it an aesthetic renewal: think of Gothic, Baroque…. It could not be otherwise with the Second Vatican Council.
Well, we, of the Way, want to present this beauty, which is the beauty of love in this dimension: Christ (pointing to the cross). And we want to present it in a Christian community, because we think…. Because Christ says: “Love one another, love one another”, but love whom? The first Christians lived in a small community, they all knew each other. The community cannot be very big because it is a question of showing, of creating a public sign of love. The number of a community is 30, 40, because we need to give a concrete witness of love. The cry of the pagans must come back: “See how they love each other”, this is what they shouted when they saw the Christians. For Christ in the Gospel says: “Love one another, love one another, love one another”. This is the beauty that saves the world: love in the dimension of the cross. It shows that if we love each other in the dimension of the enemy, we have eternal life inside. Because otherwise it is impossible to love each other in this way, because God has given us faith within and faith gives us eternal life, immortal life…. We have something within that sustains us, that sustains us, which is the life of God in us, the life of Christ, his victory over death in us, granted by the Holy Spirit. In fact, what we must proclaim is the resurrection of Christ present in us.
We want to be a serious Way, a serious path, because we are about to give a great battle to the world, to the devil, to the great dragon, we are the woman who is giving birth to the male child, threatened by the great dragon, who is the prince of this world. The Jews used to say that in the world the devil always wins. Interesting, have you seen it? Nazism, first, and communism, later, seemed to have conquered everything, everything, whole nations. We understand why all of Europe today is going towards apostasy, we understand why there is a total secularization. The devil always seems to win, because Christ, in this world, has nowhere to lay his head and with him the Christians. But we, with Christ, have conquered death and have an immense joy, so we must proclaim and bear witness to the love that God has for us, who has given us eternal life within us.
Christ says: “Love one another as I have loved you”. Christ has loved us, and in this love the secularized pagans, who surround us, will know that you are my disciples. Christ has loved us in the dimension of the enemy, that is, he has not opposed our evil. The Sermon on the Mount says: “Do not resist evil.” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you.” What is this? Christianity.
Because the point is this: what does it mean to be a Christian today, what should we bear witness to? St. Paul says: “We always and everywhere bear the manner of death of Jesus”. The manner of death, that is, Christ crucified dead – he says – “We always and everywhere carry in our body the manner of death, so that it may be seen in our body that Christ is alive”. The Second Vatican Council has spoken of the Church, sacrament of universal salvation…. Christ has shown us a justice, which is the justice of love in the dimension of the Cross.
Beauty will save the world, which is Christ living in Christians, in Christian communities. We have told the Holy See that we do not want to make a congregation, we want to bring this message to the Church: it is wonderful to live the faith in a Christian community in the parishes.
The most beautiful thing about the communities is that we have seen the action of God in the brothers, everyone is enriched by the good of others. All in all. There is a common and constant richness in everyone. It is wonderful to see that the blind see the love of God in their lives. Christ has conquered death, we do not look at death with horror, nor at old age, nor at sickness. And it is not that we are very good, but that we are all sinners, poor.
In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God demonstrates a great thing, that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, God has constituted him Kyrios. The word kyrios is the word of God on Mount Sinai. Therefore, this man who died on the cross for us is God himself.
Christ has died so that man may come out of this circle of selfishness, so that he may no longer live for himself, but for him who died and rose again for him, Christ, the divine beauty made man, has become one of us, so that man might receive the glory of God.
Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś
Archbishop of Lodz, Poland
Most illustrious gentlemen, brothers and sisters, dear Kiko!
All of us present here are surely convinced of this formula Per Artem Ad Deum.
In addition, we gather to reward the man who has made this formula one of the principles of his life.
Moreover, it MUST BE SAID that this principle is not obvious to everyone. And this “non-obviousness” has several faces:
First of all, it can have the face of art, which a priori wants nothing to do with God. Jonathan Sachs states it, in an appropriate and ardent way, in his book “The Persistence of Faith ”: for many centuries art and faith have lived in a harmonious marriage, but now they are DIVORCED! As is often the case in divorces, the cause is never of only one of the parties. The divorce between faith and culture is also due to the immaturity of the faith of Christians: a mature faith, as St. John Paul II used to say, always translates into culture!
Secondly, art can become-and often does-become an end in itself. This means that art may not want to lead to anyone, but only to itself, to be totally concentrated on itself. The saintly Brother Albert (Adam Chmielowski), one of the best Polish painters of the 19th century, warned against this phenomenon, speaking of a “Lady Art” who demands for herself an idolatrous devotion.
Thirdly, over the centuries there has been no lack of critical voices in the Church towards religious and sacred art and its demands. When the cult of images was recognized by the Second Council of Nicaea, in the West of Christianity, in the environment of Charlemagne, a series of doubts arose. The most complete collection is that of the Carolingian Books, by Theodulf of Orleans: Jesus did not order the apostles to paint images, but to preach the WORD. Why?
Because the word does not bind the human imagination as strongly as an image! We know this. I think this is our common experience. I (for example) have known since I was a child that God the Father is a rather serious old man on the clouds, bearded, with a scepter and a cruciform globe in his hand; this is how I saw him on the ceiling of my parish church (once a week, sometimes even every day); and it is almost impossible to get rid of this image.
Indeed, says Teodulfo, art has an educational value (litteratura illitteratorum), but only in relation to the word. An unexplained image of a beautiful woman could represent either Mary or Venus….
Fourth, focusing on art can reverse priorities. St. Bernard of Clairvaux has spoken of this very forcefully in the history of the Church: “The Church shines with gold and her Lord has a bare back” – the Church shines with gold – has altars, vessels and candlesticks of gold, while the Lord of the Church – Jesus in the person of the poor man – has a bare back: he has not been given a shirt, because all the funds have been spent on decorating the temple.
I recall all these objections not against the principle “per artem ad Deum”, but to show that living it correctly is far from simple: it requires not only talent, but also effort, discernment, the discipline of poverty, prayer and vigilance. The prize awarded today, therefore, does not refer only to artistic abilities, but also to the radicality of the Gospel life.
The way “per artem ad Deum” is not easy, but blessed are those who walk it and lead others along it. It is God’s way. God himself prepares it and walks it towards man. The human way “per artem ad Deum” is first and foremost God’s way “per artem ad hominem”; the Book of Wisdom speaks of it in a splendid way: “For from the BEAUTY and beauty of creatures, by analogy, their author is seen” (Wis 13:5). Two verses earlier he is called “Author of BEAUTY”. The beauty He creates is destined to lead us to Him.
But it also happens – the inspired author admits – that beauty comes between God and men who begin to worship creation: “They are carried away by appearance, SO BEAUTIFUL ARE THEY IN THEIR EYES” (v. 7). However, sin and deviance are not the last word in human history. The answer to them is SALVATION!
John Paul II, in his “Letter to Artists”, speaks of “Beauty that SAVES”; our Laureate -following Dostoyevsky- says the same. We know it well: salvation is the work of God, and it is realized thanks to the “most beautiful of the sons of man”. The way of beauty (via pulchritudinis) is the way of God’s creation and salvation. For all human beings. Not for a select few artists, but for every sinner. This is Kiko’s definitive KERIGMA.
Thank you for time
Mons. Segundo Tejado
Good night to you all, your Eminence, Excellence, friends!
I have had the task of explaining Kiko’s work. It has not been easy, it is not easy, surely I am forgetting something, because he has done so much, in so many places, so many works, that it is really difficult to quantify them. I will extend a little, not much, do not worry, but I think it is important to say today, here in this place, at this moment, to make a little tour, where God has led him in his history to reach today, to this award.
Kiko Argüello
Spanish painter, born in León on January 9, 1939. He studied at the Central School of Fine Arts of the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. He participated in numerous exhibitions and painting competitions in Spain, and in 1959 he received the Extraordinary National Prize for Painting.
At the end of the 1950s he experienced an existential crisis that led him to a profound encounter with Jesus Christ, leading him to dedicate his life and art to Christ and the Church. In 1960, together with Fr. Aguilar OP, he made a trip through Europe, before the beginning of the Council, to study sacred art, precisely in view of the Council’s convocation. In the wake of this renewal, he changed the contents of his art, and together with a sculptor and a glassmaker formed a group of sacred art called “Gremio 62”, which held a series of exhibitions in Madrid, Royan (France) and The Hague (Netherlands).
In 1964 the Lord inspired him to go and live among the poor in a shantytown in Palomeras Altas on the outskirts of Madrid, abandoning his promising career as an artist. Later he met Carmen Hernández, a missionary, with a degree in Chemistry and Theology, today a Servant of God. Together with her, he gave life to a new form of preaching that would lead to the birth of a Christian community among the poor: the first Neocatechumenal community. This experience will be brought, little by little, to the parishes. The small seed begins to germinate in Spain and, after Kiko’s experience among the poor of the periphery of Rome, in the Latin Borghetto, in Italy and all over the world. The Neocatechumenal Way today is present in 136 countries, in about 1,300 dioceses and more than 6,200 parishes.
Kiko’s art, from the beginning of the experience of the birth of the first communities, will have as an object of search the need to offer adequate and worthy places of celebration for the renewal that the Second Vatican Council is offering to the Church. Through the Neocatechumenal Way a set of structures are created to implement this renewal at the service of the Christian community.
Kiko finds in the art of the Eastern Church, the icons, the most adequate expression of the experience he is living. He is impressed by the spirituality of these painters who, renouncing their own “originality” and submitting to the canon established by the tradition of the Church, find the way to a much higher art and spirituality. Kiko follows the orthodox canon, updating it with the novelties of modern painting – such as Picasso, Matisse – in which he had been trained.
In 2000 Kiko created a school of painters for the realization of pictorial cycles in churches, as we will see below, and in 2018 the Obra Artística Kiko Argüello Foundation was established, with the aim of preserving and disseminating Kiko’s artistic work.
Architecture and Painting
Kiko Argüello, together with Carmen Hernández, began, following the path of the Council, to work on the transition from a pastoral of a massive church to a church “community of communities”, offering a complete renewal: from architecture to iconography, from the spaces for celebrations and encounters between people, what he has called Catecumenium, to the elements of the liturgy.
Thus we find Kiko’s artistic work in different parishes:
- La Paloma (Madrid)
- San Bartolomeo in Tuto in Florence
- St Catherine Labouré (Madrid)
- Holy Family (Oulu – Finland)
- Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia – Bahrein
In other churches/parishes he paints pictorial cycles, with “Mysteric Crowns” and “Altarpieces”, intended to enhance the liturgical feasts, according to the oriental tradition.
- Cathedral of Madrid (apse and chapel of Our Lady of the Way)
- Fresco of the parish of Santiago (Ávila)
- Fuentes del Carbonero Mayor Church (Segovia)
- In Rome: Crypt and Parish Hall of the Holy Canadian Martyrs, St. Francesca Cabrini, St. Luigi Gonzaga, Nativity
- Liturgical Hall of St. Frontis Parish (Zamora)
- In Madrid: Church and hall of Ntra. Sra. del Tránsito, St José, St Sebastián, La Paloma, St Roque.
- Buone Nouvelle Parish Hall (Paris)
Together with the pictorial school created by him, he carried out several pictorial cycles:
- Parish of the Most Holy Trinity (Piacenza)
- Parish of St Giovanni Battista (Perugia)
- Santísima Trinidad Parish, (St Pedro del Pinatar, Murcia)
- Parish of St Massimiliano M. Kolbe (Rome)
- Church of St Francis Xavier (Shanghai – China)
- Parish of the Pilar ( Valdemoro – Madrid)
- Churches of Troina, Cagliari, Mestre, Verona, etc.
- Church Carmelite Monastery St José (Mazarrón -Murcia)
Neocatechumenal Centers
In addition to the churches and liturgical halls of the parishes, it creates Neocatechumenal centers and convivence houses: meeting places for the catechists of the Way, the friars and the dioceses:
- Neocatechumenal Center of Madrid and Rome
- Neocatechumenal Center Servant of Yahweh (Porto San Giorgio), a place of encounter and sending of itinerant missionaries to the nations. In 1988 St. John Paul II celebrated the Eucharist and sent the first families on mission. In this center he created the first Sanctuary of the Word, a place for the study and scrutiny of the Scriptures, decorated with an original stained glass window.
- International Center “Domus Galilaeae” on the Mount of Beatitudes in the Holy Land. Following the intuition of Carmen Hernandez to build a formation center for priests and catechists in the Holy Land, the Domus Galilaeae was created and built. St. John Paul II – who visited and blessed the construction of this house in 2000 – wished that this house “could favor a profound religious formation and a fruitful dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church”. Proof of all this are the thousands of visitors, both Jews and Palestinians, who are impressed by the beauty and hospitality of the House, as well as the international meetings of bishops and rabbis. The significant sculptural group of Christ with the apostles and the sculpture of St. John Paul II preside over this place.
- Houses of convivence and Neocatechumenal centers in various countries of Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Redemptoris Mater Seminaries
The Lord inspires Kiko and Carmen the need to help the Church in this renewal by erecting, together with St. John Paul II, the first Redemptoris Mater Diocesan Missionary Seminary in Rome, which will be followed by other Bishops, who will open a Redemptoris Mater Seminary in their Dioceses, up to 120. Kiko designs the architectural model of many of these seminaries:
- Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Macerata
- Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Warsaw (Poland)
- Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Managua (Nicaragua)
- Churches of the Redemptoris Mater Seminaries of Rome and Madrid
Other artistic disciplines
In addition to these works of architecture, painting and sculpture, Kiko deals with other artistic disciplines: stained glass, liturgical paraments and goldsmith objects such as crosses, chalices, bible covers, gospels, etc., always with the aim of serving the Christian community in their faith journey.
- Stained glass of the Cathedral of Madrid (Spain)
- Stained glass windows of the International Center Porto San Giorgio (Italy)
- Stained glass windows in the seminaries of Rome, Madrid
- Stained glass windows of the Domus Galilaeae (Israel).
Music
Even through music, Kiko seeks a way to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today: he puts his artistic vocation at the service of the Church and the Liturgy by putting music to the Psalms, to passages of Sacred Scripture, hymns of the Early Church and also spiritual poems taken from his writings: more than 200 musical compositions to accompany and enrich the liturgical celebrations of the Neocatechumenal communities.
In 2010 Kiko composed his first symphony, “The Suffering of the Innocents” and, in the same year, he founded the Symphony Orchestra of the Neocatechumenal Way, an international group of about 200 musicians. This symphony is performed all over the world: in the main theaters, concert halls, squares and cathedrals: from Madrid to New York, from Chicago to Tokyo, from Budapest to Lublin, from Auschwitz to Trieste, etc. After the first symphony, Kiko composed a second score, a symphonic poem in three parts entitled “The Messiah”.
Kiko’s evangelization and artistic work has been recognized with an Honoris Causa Doctorate from four Catholic universities: Rome, Lublin, Washington and Madrid.
Kiko Argüello, after his conversion, conceives his art as a mission. With this conception of sacred art, he returns it to the place of its original vocation: the liturgy. Sacred art had been displaced from the sacred place to the museum, to the exhibition hall, to the collectors’ salons, thus annulling its cultic and liturgical value. Kiko returns the work of art to the liturgy; within a living community, an assembly that celebrates the mysteries of salvation.
A detail that I like to remember here: Kiko tears art out of the context of “business”: he does not charge for his works: he seeks an art for the poor, for the liturgy, for the community. He makes art fulfill its true and lofty mission: to bring the heart of man to the heavenly Jerusalem, to experience the love that God has shown us in Christ, born, incarnate, baptized, transfigured (he goes indicating the icons of the altarpiece), who enters the Passion, institutes the Eucharist, dies for all of us on the cross, is deposed from the cross, descends into hell to rescue man and woman, and resurrects (they bring myrrh to the tomb), appears to the apostles, ascends to heaven at the right hand of God the Father and sends his Holy Spirit upon us with Mary, the Assumption of Mary, and will come soon, will come soon, brothers and sisters, at the end of time in glory, as this Pantocrator and the time of Advent that we have just begun today remind us.
President of Targi Kielce, Sacroexpo, Sr. Andrzej Mochoń
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to greet you on the occasion of this unique event. For more than 25 years we have been organizing in Kielce the international Sacroexpo fair, an event that combines the sphere of the sacred with the business world. Every year important guests from the world of culture and religion participate in the event, which offers a space for dialogue and exchange.
In this spirit, we have been awarding the Per Artem Ad Deum Prize since 2005 . This is the only award sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture, from 2005 to 2022. The award is given to artists or institutions whose artistic activity contributes to the development of culture and the formation of human spirituality.
In recent years I have made numerous efforts to continue this great tradition. In 2017, within the scope of the Per Artem Ad Deum Award , we strengthened our collaboration by signing a letter of intent with Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, at that time President of the Pontifical Council for Culture. In 2022, following the creation of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, we were able to establish a collaboration with the Prefect of the Dicastery, Cardinal José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça. Thanks to this collaboration, future laureates will receive a medal under the auspices of the new Dicastery.
I am proud to say that in the last 19 years we have already awarded 32 outstanding personalities, among them composers Ennio Morricone, Arvo Pärt, Wojciech Kilar and Krzysztof Penderecki, directors Giuseppe Tornatore and Krzysztof Zanussi, architects Stanisław Niemczyk and Mario Botta, sculptors Arnaldo Pomodoro and Wincenty Kućma, as well as Polish painters Tadeusz Boruta, prof. Stanisław Rodziński and Jerzy Jan Skąpski, as well as the most important contemporary Russian mosaicist, Alexander Kornoukhov. These personalities have transcended time and space with their works and have guided us to the transcendent.
Today we are happy to be able to present the Per Artem Ad Deum award to Kiko Argüello. With it we want to underline his decisive contribution to Sacred Art and his intense contribution to the work of evangelization expressed in the community of the Neocatechumenal Way. Kiko’s work goes far beyond the traditional activity of artistic creation. Through painting, understood as a reflection of God’s light, and music, a universal language capable of opening the heart to the dimension of the spirit, he finds a way to announce the Gospel to contemporary man. He puts his artistic vocation at the service of the Church and its liturgy, composing music for the Psalms, other passages of Scripture, hymns of the early Church, as well as spiritual poems taken from his writings. Kiko Argüello is the author of books, as well as important works of painting, architecture and sculpture throughout the world.
It is truly a great pleasure for me today to personally present Kiko Argüello with the Per Artem Ad Deum Medal for the year 2024. This recognition, sponsored by the Dicastery for Culture and Education, celebrates all his works in the field of art.
Dear Kiko Argüello, I want to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart and thank you for your immense contribution to the development of sacred art and for your work in all the activities of the Neocatechumenal Way. May your work continue to inspire and transform the hearts of people all over the world.
Ezechiele Pasotti
Artistic work of Kiko
To speak of the Artistic Work of Kiko Argüello is extremely complex, not only from the formal point of view, because it goes from painting to architecture, from chant to polyphonic music, from catechesis – therefore from theology – to poetry, touching a world of expressions and contents not easy to grasp and compose in a single scenario, but mainly because all this moves within a picture that, despite being well composed within the framework of the liturgy, of the liturgical renewal desired by the Second Vatican Council, the author tries to capture the transcendent perspective of the “divine liturgy”, in favor of Christian initiation, of a path of Christian initiation, which leads the faithful, also the poorest and most distant from the Church, the most deprived of any formation, to an encounter with the other, the Other par excellence, who is God himself.
In his work everything is placed at the service of the divine: from gratuitousness to color, from the playing of the guitar to the arrangement of the celebrating assembly, from the composition of various liturgical elements to the details of the paten, from the chalice for the wine, to the cross…. And the impulse for all this, the deep inspiration that is born of love for beauty, He who is the Lord of beauty, is the Risen Jesus Christ, conqueror of death, who pours this beauty on the celebrating assembly and on each member who, clothed by the same divine Mystery, becomes a gift for each other in the Christian community…. And according to the words of the Blessed Virgin who inspired Kiko’s Christian Initiation, ‘the other is Christ’, the Divine incarnate, the Beauty made man, the Mystery that becomes Easter, in the enchantment of a night that awaits the dawn, the arrival of the final Eighth Day that inaugurates Heaven.
It is not possible to understand Kiko’s art if it is not within the complexity of this Paschal Mystery: Divine Mystery made flesh, so that it would be clothed with the shades of colors, the notes of songs and symphony, the form of stones and poetry, above all of the word in order to move towards Heaven, towards the fulfillment of his final vocation: God.
The President of the “Foundation of Artistic Works Kiko Argüello”, Segundo Tejado, presenting Kiko’s works on the occasion of the award “Per artem ad Deum 2024”, given by the Association Sacra Expo on December 1, 2024, said: “Kiko Argüello, since his conversion, conceives his art as a mission. With this conception of sacred art he returns it to the place of its original vocation: the liturgy. Sacred art had been displaced from the sacred place to the museum, to the exhibition hall, to the collectors’ salons, thus annulling its cultic and liturgical value. Kiko returns the work of art to the liturgy; within a living community, an assembly that celebrates the mysteries of salvation”.
And he added: “A detail that I like to remember here: Kiko tears art out of the context of “business”: he does not charge for his works: he seeks an art for the poor, for the liturgy. He makes art fulfill its true and lofty mission: to bring the heart of man to the heavenly Jerusalem, to experience the love that God has shown us in Christ, born, incarnate, baptized, transfigured, dead, risen, who ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of God, who has sent us his Spirit and who will come soon at the end of time in glory, this Pantocrator and the time of Advent that we have just begun today”.
Segundo said this by pointing out, one by one, the different icons that make up the large altarpiece painted by Kiko in the chapel of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, where the Sacra Expo award ceremony was held. And it is very meaningful to contemplate the mysteries that the icons illustrate: it is the whole history of salvation that becomes present with a mantle of colors and envelops you in the gold that defines each painting and that, in the inverted perspective typical of Byzantine art, transports you into the drawing, makes you a participant in that which the icon announces.
It is difficult to escape the fascination and not to embrace the whole arc of the liturgical year that with its feasts recounts and contemplates the mystery of Easter that has brought to fulfillment the history of salvation and projects it towards its final act: the Pantocrator who announces on the cartouche he holds in his hands: “Love your enemies. I am coming soon.”
Again, as Bishop Segundo said, enriching his idea: “Kiko’s art, from the beginning of the experience of the birth of the first communities, will have as an object of search the need to offer adequate and worthy places of celebration for the renewal that the Second Vatican Council is offering to the Church. Through the Neocatechumenal Way, a set of structures are created to implement this renewal at the service of the Christian community. Kiko finds in the art of the Eastern Church, the icons, the most adequate expression to the experience he is living. He is impressed by the spirituality of these painters who, renouncing their own “originality” and submitting to the canon established by the tradition of the Church, find the way to a much higher art and spirituality. Kiko follows the orthodox canon, updating it with the novelties of modern painting – such as Picasso, Matisse – in which he had been formed”.
And Kiko’s work is not only reflected in painting, but also in architecture, in singing, in symphonic music, in writings, in designing a composition of the celebratory space of the community that allows and favors a true and active participation in the mysteries celebrated by the liturgy.
This is what Kiko himself emphasized in his brief intervention, stating with conviction: “Much more important than all my artistic work has been the opening of a Way of Christian Initiation in the whole Church, which is helping so many families and so many young people. This is indeed a work of art”.
At the center of this whole artistic complex, as we said at the beginning, are two great mysteries: Christ and man. Christ who, in the hands of the Father, is the artificer, the inspirer of the beauty of the creation of the world and of man, and this man, Adam, who, created as the culmination of beauty together with his consort Eve, allows himself to be seduced by the suggestion of becoming ‘god’, of being able to walk, to build a future alone, to build his tower of Babel by climbing to heaven – as so much modern ideology has reimagined – forgetting that instead it is God and God alone who makes man great. Man, abandoned to himself, does nothing but fall into the hell of concentration camps and extermination and death.
This is what Kiko wanted to proclaim loud and clear, once again, upon receiving the “Per artem ad Deum” award: “What is man? What is man? It is a becoming, it is a project, it is a prodigy. Man! Man is a prodigy. We are a project in constant realization, that is, in constant precariousness. We have no right to take away from man the possibility of realizing himself as God has created him, because he is a project in constant realization”.
He continued, quoting St. Paul, affirming that “Christ died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. This is the vision of man according to Revelation, this is Christian anthropology: man, a slave of sin, is obliged to offer everything to himself, precisely because he is a slave, he has lost the dimension of beauty that is love, the coming out of himself in order to love the other. The work of salvation consists in freeing man from this curse by restoring to him the beauty of love”.
“For this man we are trying to create a new type of parish; we make parishes with a mystical crown where heaven is present, with the most important mysteries of our faith. Today’s Church does not have a defined aesthetic… This has pushed us, in a certain sense, to look for an aesthetic. In Madrid we have built a parish with a golden roof, with white stone and glass, with a catechumenium: a group of rooms facing a central square, with a fountain. On the first floor are all the social services and upstairs, on another floor, are all the rooms of each community, etc.”.
Here is the source of the art, of the inspiration that has set this man of God, Kiko Argüello, in motion: the mystery of the love of God who, in Jesus Christ, has come to seek and save the world, to restore it to its divine beauty through a Christian initiation, gradual and complete, that introduces it into a Christian community, the Church, the new Eve, resplendent with beauty, to make her the bride of Christ.
And Kiko continued in his announcement: “We want to be a serious Way, a serious path, because we are about to give a great battle to the world, to the devil, to the great dragon, we are the woman who is giving birth to the male child, threatened by the great dragon, who is the prince of this world. The Jews used to say that in the world the devil always wins. Interesting, have you seen it? Nazism, first, and communism, later, seemed to have conquered everything, everything, whole nations. We understand why all of Europe today is going towards apostasy, we understand why there is a total secularization. The devil always seems to win, because Christ, in this world, has nowhere to lay his head and with him the Christians. But we, with Christ, have conquered death and have an immense joy, so we must proclaim and bear witness to the love that God has for us, who has given us eternal life within us”.
And he concluded, quoting Dostoyevsky: “Beauty will save the world, which is Christ living in Christians, in Christian communities… it is wonderful to live the faith in a Christian community in parishes. The most beautiful thing about communities is that we have seen the action of God in the brothers, everyone is enriched by the good of others. Everyone in everyone. There is a common and constant richness in everyone. It is wonderful to see that the blind see the love of God in their lives. Christ has conquered death, we do not look upon death with horror, nor old age, nor sickness. Christ has died so that man may come out of this circle of selfishness, so that he may no longer live for himself, but for him who died and rose again for him, Christ, the divine beauty made man, has become one of us, so that man could receive the glory of God”. Kiko’s art, in its different expressions of painting, architecture, music, songs, poems, is an icon of all this great design of God for the life of man, because as St. Irenaeus exclaims: “The glory of God is the man who lives”, who lives in fullness.”
Don Ezechiele Pasotti
Our translation of the article published with the authorization of Vatican News
“Per Artem ad Deum” award to Kiko Argüello: the world awaits the beauty of God
The association Sacra Expo has awarded the prize “Per Artem ad Deum” to the Spanish painter, co-initiator of the Neocatechumenal Way. The ceremony took place yesterday afternoon, December 1, 2024, in the chapel of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Rome.
Debora Donnini – Vatican City
A beauty that does not end in itself, but is capable of moving man, introducing him to the experience of the love of God. This was the guiding thread of the ceremony yesterday afternoon, Sunday, December 1, during which Kiko Argüello, co-initiator of the Neocatechumenal Way, was awarded the medal of the Per artem ad Deum award , from the Polish association Sacra Expo, under the patronage of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. A recognition that “is awarded to artists or institutions whose artistic results contribute to the development of culture and the formation of human spirituality,” explains the president of the association, Andrzej Mochoń. In the last nineteen years it has been awarded to personalities of the caliber of musicians such as Ennio Morricone, directors such as Giuseppe Tornatore and Krzysztof Zanussi, sculptors such as Arnaldo Pomodoro and others, among whom are also well-known painters and architects.
Reasons for the prize
The concession took place in a joyful atmosphere in the chapel of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Rome in the presence of about 200 people, among them some itinerants and collaborators of Kiko in painting, architecture and music. Mario Pezzi and María Ascensión Romero, members of the team responsible for the Neocatechumenal Way together with Kiko Argüello. “Kiko’s work – stressed Mochoń – goes far beyond the traditional activity of artistic creation. Through painting, understood as a reflection of the light of God, and music, a universal language capable of opening the heart to the dimension of the spirit, he finds a way to proclaim the Gospel to contemporary man”.
Mochoń recalled that Kiko “puts his artistic vocation at the service of the Church and its liturgy, composing music for the Psalms, other passages of Scripture, hymns of the Church, as well as spiritual poems taken from his writings. Kiko Argüello is the author of books, as well as important works of painting, architecture and sculpture throughout the world.”
The award also refers to the radical nature of the evangelical life.
On the possibility of art becoming an idolatrous devotion, in the sense of leading to nothing but itself, Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, Archbishop of Łódź, has focused. He has underlined this aspect, precisely to explain that it is not easy to live correctly “the principle per artem ad Deum”, because it requires not only talent but also discernment and prayer. “The award given does not refer, therefore, only to artistic abilities but also to the radicalism of the evangelical life.” The cardinal quoted the letter to artists of St. John Paul II and recalled, therefore, that the way of beauty is the way of the proclamation of salvation for all human beings, for every sinner.
Kiko: The Way is the most important part of my artistic work.
Thanking Kiko for the award, he recalled the deepest meaning of his artistic experience. “The Lord – he explained – has done with Carmen (Hernandez, servant of God and co-initiator of the Neocatechumenal Way ) and with me something impressive. Because the most important of all my artistic work has been to open a Way of Christian Initiation” in the Church that is helping so many families and young people. “This is indeed a work of art,” he said in his speech in which he explored the meaning of beauty. Beauty is, in fact, relationship, as shown, for example, in a landscape, the blue of the sky that sings to the beauty of the gray or white clouds. This is because “the deepest content of beauty is love”. Going even deeper, he referred to Dostoevsky who says that beauty is Christ: “Beauty always produces an aesthetic emotion” and it is “as if God wants to show with beauty that he loves us”.
Kiko explored the meaning of beauty through Sacred Scripture. He recalled that God calls Christians to participate in the construction of this beauty, showing God’s love to the world, witnessing that it is possible to no longer live for oneself. “The work of salvation consists in wrenching man from the curse of offering everything to himself, returning him to the beauty of love.” People are waiting for the proclamation of the Gospel to the poor, and to see this kind of love realized: “Love your enemies”. The Neocatechumenal Way tries to bring this through small Christian communities in the parish – composed of 30-40 people – to show God’s love in an increasingly secularized world. The Second Vatican Council speaks, in fact, of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. For this reason, it is very important that the beauty of Christ shine forth in Christians. “Christ has died,” concluded Kiko, ”so that man may come out of this circle of selfishness, so that he may no longer live for himself, but for him who died and rose again for him, Christ.”
The artistic work
Segundo Tejado, president of the Fundación Ópera Artística Kiko Argüello, whose aim is to preserve and make known his works, recalled how Kiko studied Fine Arts at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid and won the 1959 National Extraordinary Prize for Painting. At the end of the 1950s, he had an existential crisis and, after a profound encounter with the Lord, he went to live among the poor in the shantytowns of Palomeras Altas in Madrid. There he met Carmen Hernandez and began the experience of the Neocatechumenal Way, which today is present in 136 nations, in about 6,200 parishes. Kiko’s art, whether in iconography or architecture, seeks to offer places in harmony with the renewal brought by the Second Vatican Council. In painting, explained Fr. Tejado, his reference is the icons of the Eastern Church: Kiko is impressed by these painters who renounce their own “originality” by submitting to the pre-established canon of tradition. Kiko is therefore inspired by this art, updating it with the progress of modern painting – such as Picasso and Matisse – in which he had been trained. His artistic works can be found in many parishes: from Rome to Florence; from Piacenza to Paris, to the Cathedral of Madrid, just to mention a few places.
Tejado stressed, “Kiko takes art out of the context of business: he does not charge for his works. He seeks an art for the poor, for the liturgy”, ‘an art that leads man to experience the love that God has shown us in Christ’. Kiko has also designed the architectural model of some seminaries, made stained glass windows, some sculptures and liturgical ornaments. His artistic work also embraces the field of music as a way to proclaim the Gospel. In 2010 he composed his first symphony. The Suffering of the Innocents and, in the same year, he founded the Neocatechumenal Way Symphony Orchestra, an international group formed by about 200 musicians. The symphony has been performed in many theaters, concert halls, squares and cathedrals: in Madrid, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Berlin, Jerusalem, Budapest, Lublin, Auschwitz, Trieste.
In fact, to close the event, a movement from the second symphonic poem The Messiah was performed by a piano and violin duo, with a soloist. The notes of the music and the gaze directed to the altarpiece of the chapel, where scenes from the life of Christ are represented, have sealed the meeting, making it a living experience of that beauty capable of touching the heart of man.