UNTIL SUNDAY 11/10
THE SHIP. University, 2
There is no other artist, of any discipline, who has three National Awards. Only Miguel Calatayud. In his role as illustrator, the most extensive and recognized, the last exhibition that Valencia dedicated to him focused on, he Carmel Center concretely, where we saw the mythical Kembo up close, a mischievous and vegetarian African lion designed by the brilliant Carlos Pérez. Today it is his work as a cartoonist that receives the spotlight in La Nau, which has already dedicated its rooms to great Valencian figures of comics and graphic humor such as Paco Roca y Ortifus, and emblematic satirical magazines such as The Traca y Brother Wolf. So, in this very soft bed, The man who paved the way for the clear line in Spain comfortably fits. They were the seventies and Calatayud, along with many other illustrators of his generation, They gave a new direction to Spanish children's illustration. The radicality of Miguel's proposal was expressed in an anti-naturalist aesthetic with a narrative accent., the link with popular culture and the artistic avant-garde, and an imaginary that surpassed established borders and genres. The gouache, the fine line as a delimiting element, the geometry and simplification of shapes, balance and rhythm from colors, and the cubist decomposition of perspective stirred the Spanish hornet's nest. His first works published in the magazine Trinca They were pioneers in incorporating the language of pop-art, which shattered the conventions of Spanish comics and opened a world of narrative possibilities through line and color.
The sample Line, luz, color goes through the main creative stages of Aspense, from fundamental titles such as Peter Petrake o The twelve labors of Hercules, that decisively influenced an entire generation of cartoonists; until later works such as The Atlantic runway (reissued in 2021) o The Cyclops Project, where the clear line appears linked to the Mediterranean light. Calatayud uses classic literary motifs, archetypal characters, cinematographic gags and traditional stories in proposals as innovative as Los 12 labors of Hercules, which we were talking about before, originally published in Trinca, where Mycenaean ceramics and the art of Heinz Edelmann coexist. Another work in which references are embedded is The fried foot, which is inspired by Goya's engravings, he western American and the valencianor, visible in elements such as aucas oh go sarcastic. Calatayud knew how to look at tradition with avant-garde eyes. The La Nau exhibition brings together some of these visual references that served as inspiration, along with originals from an author of few comics that, however, promoted the New School, that generation of Valencian cartoonists from the eighties that placed us at the European avant-garde. S.M.
