Looking for a light reading, Paula Bonet came by chance in the book The year that snowed in Valencia, a brief story of New notebooks of Anagram that begins with the print of the snowy Malvarosa the winter of 1956. Rafael Chirbes's autobiographical text is a paste full of layers that narrates, with the voice of a seven -year -old boy, an intimate and everyday story. He is, probably, The most powerful voice in contemporary Valencian literature, And before he died he expressed his desire to see in pictures this story that Bonet, without knowing it, He wanted to paint. Anagram gave approval and threw down to extract pictures of Chirberian passages (The adjective is worth it) with just one reading on the back. The result is this artifact that dialogues the art of two great Valencian artists.
The year that snowed in Valencia It was Rafael Chirbes's first book you read, i You got to him looking for a light text. Now that you have read almost all of your work… There is any light book when we talk about Chirbes?
Res. There is nothing. Obviously, if you had known the figure of Rafael Chirbes, would have been perfectly known that this was not going to be light. I was attracted to the format, the color and title: The year that snowed in Valencia. I am Valencian and the title refers to a city that is important in my biography, is the place where I studied, where I started my academic training, where I made the first emotional discoveries linked to the meat, vital and economic independence. And is a city where I have a conflict. I love her very much and also the odie very much.
What caught you from the book?
Reading this title and led me to imagine my city with a white filter, with a snowfall… This symbol allowed me to approach other eyes on the city, not only evident, but also symbolic. I find that in Valencia, in the Valencian Country in general, There are no medium tones. When you are painting, You analyze the shade areas very well, the areas of the middle tones and the areas of light. And in Valencia it is like there is a lot of light and many shadows. It is a golden light, It is a light that falls like gold. Imagine that gray sky of the Nordic city and travel the streets that I know so well, With this white snow carpet, I found it attractive.
Painting loses its three -dimensional materiality when passing to the two dimensions of a book. Why do you choose painting to illustrate the story?
I have not illustrated a book. In fact, We got to think about publishing a catalog with the paintings and book of Chirbes in a box, and that it was: The year that snowed in Valencia by Paula Bonet, i The year that snowed in Valenciaby Rafael Chirbes. Our L’Elguila left me dry. then, I was attracted to putting myself painting a book, which was initially going to be twenty small landscape paintings, by how the narrative begins: the cold, The Nevada Platja, The sea a tab over the sand… But it ended up becoming a job of more than three years, became very large. suddenly, had four -meter leaflets, and other smaller pieces, near forty paintings I painted after the first reading and without thinking absolutely about anything, Without thinking about what the book would look like, In what was a book… There are many parallels I found after, Once the finished work. For example, I have realized that this initial metaphor of the sea licking the beach, of water tongues over snow, is in many of the paintings. About the characters even. Chirbes was very important the landscape and the figure, the landscape and the meat. At the moment I understand that I have to paint the figure, How should I paint the landscape, risking to burst and lose it, With the Veladures, is when the book makes more sense, When dialogue between pictures makes more sense. I did my work. It's not an illustrated book, I have made a painting exhibition that has been difficult for us to bring it to the book format. I do not know how to put myself at the service of another work with which you do not pile. That is why I find the word "illustrator" so much to me, out of respect for illustrators, Because I have not formed as an illustrator.
You use a lot of white and a lot of vessels to illustrate this story set in a snowy Valencia and I would say that you attract this chromatic sobriety. Despite being Mediterranean, you like to paint sobrian atmospheres, gray and frozen?
Yeah. And I don't know how to explain. I don't know if I enjoy… Painting is thought, is look. It's uncomfortable. I seek to understand all these shades, That's why they are painted. Not because you want them to avoid them, not because they give me pleasure, but precisely because I want to shuffle them. I don't think anyone likes to live in the pain. Our, no. What he tries is to fulfill it. L’Elguila exists because I do not want the fact that this book denounces is ever repeated. There is something obvious: We don't paint what we want, I do not sculpt the subjects of whom I speak. Hopefully! And there is a drive that leads you to paint what you stir, that you are in accordance with you and you want to shuffle. Painting for pleasure, I haven't done it yet.
Painting is only exorcizing? You find no pleasure?
There is an imbalance. And there is a part of the creative process you never just resolved. Is always there and keeps the drive alive. You are painting, And there are some moments (always passes) In those who are in that communion, You feel you go to touch something, that is here, that you are about, and when you have almost achieved it… disappears and you have not touched it. I think that's why we paint, We write and deliver to art. Because you know this is and the best one day you touch it. Hi has a German painter that my m’encanta, Paula Modersohn Becker, that said that, only with painting three good paintings, would go quiet. Three good paintings! Me with a, already in comfort. Because I know it's very difficult. Many things have to be joined to get a good box and never, what he is painting, has the ability to join them.
You have dit that the Carn Molta presence in Chirbes. then, The painting born of his literature should not be figurative?
Chirbes is very abstract. In fact, I thought it would be an abstract book. My initial idea of the book was to paint the sea and the skies. Landscape paintings are very abstract. I wanted a book, an atmosphere book, physical, tactile. And that's what I started looking for.
The figuration then appeared precisely because Chirbes is a bloodstream?
There is an obvious balance between the landscape and the meat.
Tant tu com chirbes sou Valencianoparlants, But both write in Spanish. He was schooled during the Franco regime, But you already go to a school where the Valencian was not outlawed. So and all, You feel more comfortable writing in Spanish?
My training was in Spanish and, after, the thickness of readings too, in Spanish. I had a hard time talking about this. When I started with this interesting interest in Rafael Chirbes figure, I searched for all possible interviews, their lectures… And I was surprised that, There is one in the CCCB, where he starts talking in Valencian and very soon apologizes and changes to Spanish, And he explains it. His reflection was that his Valencian was that of a seven -year -old boy and his formation had been in Spanish and that, clar, To talk about literature I was much more comfortable using Spanish. He said: “I have a conflict, or had a conflict, because of course, I am building characters who think, They speak and feel in Valencian, and I write them in Spanish ”. Made this reflection: "I had this conflict and in the end I understood that it cannot be a conflict". And you are already. I to my there, somehow, I relieved me. I said, omen, There is a person who has put words to something I feel and I don't know how to explain and how to explain me. And somehow, This slightly gave me some peace.
Spanish may also serve me to put a barrier, a filter to protect me. Because, usually, the topics I deal with, Although not all are autobiographical or do not touch me at once, are closely linked to privacy and intimacy must take care of. But yes, may be, There is a part of protection, of feeling less exposed. But I don't know, It is a reflection that I do about the gait…
I heard you say that Chirbes had a "total feminist look". You can argue?
Just read The year that snowed in Valencia, The good lyrics, On the shore… And see how the characters build. In The good lyrics, mother's main character, Well, is the one that holds the whole family, Despite all the hardships. Also male characters are sided with a gender perspective. I find that the fact of putting care in an important place, com fa On the shore, is openly feminist. Also how she talks about prostitution, or the woman who is going to do the domestic work at home's home. Throughout his career, The revised masculinity appears, that is a very contemporary thing, It is something we are doing in recent years. In Chirbes is already.
Also in Chirbes the disaster that lived recently in Valencia. He criticizes that housing is being built with terrible materials in flooding places, that are sold at the price of gold. They didn't ask him about gender. Think, I don't know. But I am sure that I had responded the same as they responded when they asked about how predicted the bubble [real estate]: “¡Predict what?! I was leaving home and they were all Grúes, I was looking at!"He talked a lot about witnessing the time or symptom. That what interests you is to be witnessed. His work is totally political. And feminism is there.
