library
The hidden face of Pere Calders
Writer and critic Julià Guillamon likes to tie up knots, and that's what he has done to Pere Calders. Writer and cartoonist.
The volume is the result of an exhaustive research work on the most unknown side of Calders, that of advertising cartoonist and puppeteer, book cover designer and author of encyclopedia engravings. After reading it and enjoying the graphic creativity of the author of Cròniques de la veritat oculta, it is clear that Julià Guillamon (the writer, sometimes doubled as critic, exhibition ideologist and rescuer of forgotten figures) has had a great time tracing the most hidden side of an author who, like so many others of his generation, saw his world collapse under fascism.
Diari de Barcelona, 2 de gener de 1937
We discover a Kalders (some drawings he signed like this, and some jokes with a solitary K) with a very modern graphic style that connects with avant-garde movements, and an overflowing visual imagination, elements present in his texts. Anyone who has read Calders' stories and novels will recall some of the illusions shattered by the whims of chance, no matter how many technical advances the 20th century brought.
Pere Calders. Writer and cartoonist, he compiles and contextualizes jokes and covers made for L'Esquella de la Torratxa, the Diari de Barcelona, propaganda elements for Estat Català, the auca de la rereguarda, illustrations for the logbook of the refugee ship that took him to Mexico, the drawings he made for the encyclopedic dictionary of the UTEHA publishing house... Among the advertising gems included in the volume, we should mention the joke for the Diari de Barcelona where he draws a hollow apple from which two worms emerge: one has the face of Hitler and the other that of Mussolini. (Isn't it absolutely valid, if we change the faces to current leaders who tend towards oligarchy?).
Diari de Barcelona, 21 de gener de 1937
As Guillamon points out, despite the war climate, in many of his creations Calders addresses the illusion of normality: “Anxious literature, compromised realism were imposed everywhere, and Calders had to defend himself tooth and nail and claim the space for creation, imagination and humor.”
For all of this, it is fair and necessary to thank Guillamon for the work he has done. There are few people capable of getting the Barcelona City Council, the Institute of Catalan Literature, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Barcelona Libraries to agree to publish a volume. But the cause was worth it, and now there is a tool that connects the literary and graphic work of Pere Calders.
Undoubtedly, a first step to integrate all the personalities of a great artist.
You may be
interested
...
