Estancias. Letters in the Panera

Estancias is the title of the exhibition that we are presenting at the emblematic MIHACALE, Museum of the Flour Industry of Castilla y León, located in Gordoncillo (León), an example of good work in the field of industrial archeology and today converted into a dynamic cultural space of reference. Actually, it is an exhibition that is part of the proposal Letters in the Panera which on this occasion presents a sincere, deep and simple tribute to two structural writers from León in the literary world. Two clear examples of cultivating the written word with care and depth, but also two essential pillars of the traditional word, alive, felt, discussed and shared live at El Filandón. Two authors who have won the National Literature Prize from the Ministry of Culture; Luis Mateo Díez (Villablino 1942) in 2020 and José María Merino (La Coruña 1941) in 2021, among many other awards they treasure. On this occasion, Gordoncillo, a small town that watches over culture and its development, will present them, through its corporation, with the Golden Seed award, formalized by the Colombian sculptor Luis Hernando Rivera. A symbol of the public and explicit recognition of the peasantry of the rural world and its lands to these outstanding figures of the territory.

In this exhibition proposal we have not wanted to dwell on or focus on the work and specific figure of these unique creators of the word. With the title Estancias we have attempted an approximation to that human, vital and felt reality that is produced when in those private, solitary spaces of peace, calm and reflection, those rooms, silent places, where the magic of communication and spiritual and cognitive connection between the reader and the writer. That individual, unrepeatable, intimate, captivating act that allows us to open the doors to imagination, to travel, to a new world that enriches our spirit. That space, as well as its creative and plastic consequences, is the territory on which we have tried to reflect both from a general perspective and linked to these two authors. Thus, fundamentally based on plastic works from the Contemporary Art collection of the Diputación de León (ILC) and others donated by collectors and artists who collaborate in the project, we propose an exhibition that aims to value the interrelation between the world of the plastic arts and the word world. The close and direct interrelationships between art and the literary world are very deep and important and of great significance in our province; We will try to show these relationships through a wide range of works and documents.

We have incorporated different aspects and approaches in relation to the reader/writer binomial; in the first place, those reader writers who are directly linked to the action of plastic creation. This is an interesting and curious question, and, although it is not general, it does have a large number of writers who are plastic artists at the same time. We wanted to emphasize and highlight a reality that is often overlooked and even forgotten today, due to the misunderstood specialization to which our current society seems to be condemned; Any type of creation does not take place in stagnant and limited territories, rather on the contrary, it is binding, fruitful in connections and relationships between different areas of knowledge that allow maximum tension in the process of creating.

The exhibition features the emblematic example of two paintings by Juan Manuel Díaz Caneja, a national prize-winner for painting and an outstanding literary creator. The unique Juan Carlos Mestre that fuses the word and the plastic in a masterful unity, as demonstrated by the magnificent artist’s book Cavalo Morto which is accompanied by the sculpture dedicated to the same theme, an integral work that also has its musical performative conformation. Toño Benavides is a magnificent illustrator of works by literary authors in which he dives, achieving a brilliant plastic unity with the text, proof of this are the multiple awards he has received, but at the same time he is a great writer and poet. Castorina the singular painter and extraordinary sculptress, she also wrote beautiful and painful poems and texts, very little known, but of great value; In this case, a serigraphy is incorporated into the exhibition that corresponds to the portrait of Miguel Hernández, the poet of her longings with whom she coincided in dignity, simplicity and cleanliness of spirit. Luis Sáenz de la Calzada, intellectual, writer and plastic creator, is present with a very significant piece: the portrait of Federico García Lorca, companion of the soul and of the Barraca. Eduardo Arroyo is a very special case, trained in the world of journalism; his self-exile in France forces him to take refuge in the plastic arts, achieving great international recognition, but in his plastic proposal he implicitly carries the essence of the writer; his painting is intensely narrative and tells us stories through images, suffice it to cite the joint work with two friends Gilles Aillaud and Antonio Recalcati entitled: Live and let die or the tragic end of Marcel Duchamp em>. He thus created with his friends the so-called Narrative Painting em>, but he also made an intense contribution as a writer and choreographer. The writer Ramón Carnicer is also present in the exhibition with a series of photographs of magnificent workmanship, which he took on his famous trip through Cabrera Alta and Baja to write in 1964 the tremendous, tragic and controversial book Where the Urdes are called Cabrera; a clear example of how the basic documentary material to create a work can reach a high quality that in this case could be perfectly inscribed in the field of neorealist photography by the Palangana group, with Cuallado, Camín or Massat in the lead. A special and outstanding case is Gustavo Vega who, inscribed in the territory of visual poetry, acquires in his own right the convergence and union of the writer and poet with the plastic artist; In the piece that we incorporate, an object assemblage, he reflects on freedom of expression. p>

There is another broad group of plastic creators that we have included in the exhibition because they are great readers and are constantly inspired by the literary world as a space and territory for reflection. This is the case of José Antonio Robés, an excellent photographer from Berciano who has maintained a close relationship with Juan Carlos Mestre, Pereira and Cristóbal Halffter, and in this case he offers an extraordinary interpretation of the poems Poeta en New York by Federico García Lorca. Petra Hernández is present with a screen-printed portrait of Antonio González de Lama, a singular literary personality who, together with Vitoriano Cremer and Eugenio de Nora, created the emblematic literary magazine Espadaña. Eloy Vázquez Cuevas is inspired by and portrays Julio Llamazares. Miguel Ángel González Febrero does the same with Gumersindo de Azcárate, a fundamental exponent of the Leonese intelligentsia and a pillar of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the Sierra Pambley Foundation. An outstanding Leonese painter belonging to the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Primitivo Álvarez Armesto, paints an austere and magnificent psychological portrait in oil of one of the fathers of letters from Leon, José Francisco de Isla. several illustrators of outstanding level, who are at the same time great readers, as is the case of Javier Zabala, national winner of youth illustration or Martín with an international career important in the field of comics. With less experience in the field of illustration, but significant, is Roberto Díez with the powerful expressionist illustrations of the poems The Last Man by Leopoldo Mª Panero. The young Samuel Miranda approaches us through photographic reinterpretations of the portraits of Manuel Martín, Antonio Gamoneda and Leopoldo Panero. The sculptor Jesús Martínez provides a mobile of extreme simplicity and poetic charge.

The exhibition is completed with a section of creators who reflect directly on or have or have had a relationship or connection with the two authors Mateo and Merino, the case of the sculptor Amancio González Andrés who presents a magnificent set of sixteen busts of male and female writers, ranging from a very descriptive realism to a certain psychological sense, and among them are those dedicated to Luis Mateo Díez and José María Merino. The photographs of the magnificent Astorgan photographer Amando Casado, dedicated to these two authors, delve into their personality with remarkable strength and expressiveness. An artist’s book is provided, focused on the Arcana, by Manolo Jular, an outstanding creator closely linked to the Claraboya magazine. Magazine that is fully incorporated in its original edition and that was created by Luis Mateo Díez, Agustín Delgado, Ángel Fierro and José Antonio Llamas and in which many poets and graphic illustrators collaborated: Javier Carvajal, Higinio del Valle, José Antonio Díez, Marí Carmen Andrada, Luis G. Horna or Manuel Jular, the photographer Manuel Martín and Balibrea. Precisely, the exhibition includes a wide set of photographs by Manuel Martín of the members of the magazine, as well as a photograph, included in number 14, reminiscent of a magical surreal world. Of Higinio del Valle we can contemplate a computer-treated image of great plastic expressiveness from the last period. In the case of José Antonio Díez, brother of Luis Mateo Díez, we have selected a painting from the early period corresponding to the 1965 Villablino Exaltation of Leonese Values Painting Prize and several recent works of image treatment of great interest. José Antonio Díez is a great unknown creator of great importance. Also included in the exhibition is a unique and splendid piece, the suite of engravings by Félix de Cárdenas, from the book León Trace and Memory made by three: Luis Mateo Díez, José Maria Merino and Antonio Gamoneda. A turning point includes a work by Ramón Villa, published in the Filandón, which served to illustrate a text by Merino. From the private collection of Alfonso García, a series of pictorial works by José María Merino are contributed, which are congratulations and varied documentation; among them are the speeches of both writers corresponding to admission to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. Finally, a dragon made of recycled materials from industrial elements by Juan Carlos Uriarte, a multidisciplinary artist, tireless reader, bibliophile and bookseller of a very prominent group of intellectuals and creators who gathered around the bookstore, is incorporated Pisa, a true political and cultural center of León.

A special and simple exhibition at the same time, which aims to highlight the interrelationship between the world of words and the plastic arts and the relevance that the world of letters has for plastic artists, as well as paying homage to these two magicians of the word, Luis Mateo Díez and José María Merino.