Recently, in a respectable Spanish newspaper, called the “Diario de Leon” appeared an article that was very well written except for a few minor errors and omissions that have been pointed out to me by my fathers’, EL.GGoDo’s friends – however I will overlook these here. The original article can be viewed here: https://www.diariodeleon.es/articulo/cultura/reivindicacion-ggodo/202101170232382079021.html the author whom I will not name contacted me to see whether I minded whether he wrote an article about my father and I replied no, I did not mind. The article is completely his article. I have translated the article from Spanish using Microsoft Word translation feature. Here is the article:
Claim of El Ggodo
The legendary and bohemian figure of the painter born in Veneros is driven after his death by Alexander Rodriguez, one of his sons, ready to transmit his art, Leon and his unique life.
A representative portrait of the work of El Ggodo. DL
JANUARY 17, 2021, 2:32 AM
The Ggodo was not the most famous painter, but his paintings populate many Lioness houses and there is work of him even in the Cathedral. And out of Leon, too. He disappeared without leaving any clues but distant signs arrive from Canada, Germany, Australia… The man, Pedro Rodríguez Fuertes, was born in León, but the painter, El Ggodo, in San Sebastian. And all explainable. Anyway, they’re the same person. More than a singular type, which was, we could talk about a plural type. Someone unwilling to let go of the infatuation. And, what is no longer known whether to classify as dexterity or pathology, never forget the women he loved. He died in León, but it was barely known. A squeal in the Basque media and a farewell in the Sarria de Mungia tanatorio (village of Biscay) was his last review. Maybe one more break to fate but full of feeling. Now, from Australia his son Alexander Rodriguez claims it through a website on a dizzying artistic and vital journey.
In the local artistic world few remember it, but his work is present in the private and the institutional. His biographical portrait is at first glance unlaped. The autobiographical, a whirlwind. And their bonds, more than persistent. “I was in León in 1984 and 1985, in 1993 and 1999. I enjoyed every trip there. I have fond memories of Veneros and Leon and their people. I would like to take my son to Spain,” says his son Alexander, son also of an Australian tennis player named Susan Alexander. That virtual site is a life treaty.
Bohemian
It is the journey of the wandering man, as defined by Victorian Crémer. And sometimes erratic, recognized by himself. The romantic painter or bohemian who lived like a king. The memory is as proud as it is melancholy. The love of his life may have only been one, but he had many. He lists them himself and they seem key to the influence of his becoming. Fact that incurs the constant contradiction of El Ggodo and that makes sense in this account, since it is himself who in the first person and to explain his life and work resorts to this personal data and that are of compulsive infatuations and a lot of travel.
The Ggodo was veneros in León but Basque in the Basque Country. Although he ended up defining himself a citizen of the world. He was born in 1933 but also in 1960, when he says that in a restaurant in San Sebastian, his father and the owner of the place named him Godo. Then he added a g and assured decades later that he was even plagiarled by the typography of his signature and his name written as follows: EL. GGoDo. And that’s where he seems to start his life as an artist.
There are lion intellectuals who remember it but not so many. Maximo Rascón, who even demanded months ago a well-deserved secure document deeper than this text, to glor make up the figure of the painter of Veneros, considers it more than just that it is remembered. More importantly, he did have knowledge of el Ggodo’s death last June. And so vuelapluma recalls that there is his work in the Cathedral, but that at the end of his most active stage as a painter he offered some strange paintings. In those paintings there are UFOs, spaceships, astronauts… next to religious symbols. And he must have squeaked a little. But he painted landscapes, portraits, abstractions… Marcellin Cuevas, an art critic in this newspaper, may have been able to come up with some guarantee theory about this mysterious mutis.
Image of the artist next to one of his works. CUEVAS
Vicente Pueyo, also deceased and illustrious of this house, wrote about him in Diario de León.
And, of how not, it is common that the eternal Victorian Crémer dedicated a Crémer to Crémer tohim. And although he said that The Ggodo was capable of the sublime and the forgettable, in those lines he defines him as a dazzling creator of realities.
In memory
But it turns out this appears: “In loving memory of my father Pedro Rodriguez Fuertes, EL. GGoDo 26th of March 1933 — 11th of June 2020”. And it’s about his son Alexander J. Rodriguez. Alexander’s idea through that website is that his father’s figure should be preserved as an artistic flame. In fact, he says that “I’ve always liked to know who enjoys my father’s works.” And from that leit motive, as of course the family and emotional ties, Alexander highlights the origin of El Ggodo in Veneros.
He had two more daughters, eight grandchildren, a great-grandson and two brothers. He himself accounts for up to 1,600 works, which were sure to be more and are sown by the places of his life.
The story ends in Veneros, where it began. Perhaps he now arouses curiosity to know more about himself and his work. Or simply serve to put in order an ungovernable catalogue of which there is a note on the aforementioned website. Because it gives the feeling that the story of El Ggodo rather than an end seems to deserve the asterisk of ‘will continue’ as a life that only fit in many other lives.
ELGGoDo.com 
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