Book Presentation: The smell of turpentine

Antoni Vives Fierro has turned art into a way of life. In this memoir, he takes us on a jour-ney through what has been a fertile, creative career of over half a century of uncondition-al commitment to painting. An intense journey that features a difficult, yet highly stimulat-ing preamble, as we follow him on his search for a language of his own. A search for a way to understand reality and to express it with personality. A solitary struggle that is not always rewarded or understood at the beginning of any artistic career, and much less so if it coincides (as it did in his case) with a historical period filled with so much silence and murkiness.

However, always stubborn by nature, Vives Fierro persisted and succeeded in developing one of the most solid, coherent artistic projects of all our country’s leading artists, during which time he has remained true to his figurative way of being and creating, which has turned him into the urban landscape artist par excellence. Rather than simply painting reality, he paints the soul of reality. Rather than depicting it just as it is, he shows reality as we are sometimes able to see it. The reality of small things, of details, corners and atmos-pheres. The reality beyond the tangible and the visible.

In this book, Vives Fierro looks back on his many experiences and memories. From his struggles in the studio to his stubbornness in promoting his work and his successes in exhibition halls throughout the world. He tells of how he travelled in order to nourish him-self with new experiences, of his faith in books and culture, and his insatiable hunger for new knowledge. He describes his passionate relationship with Barcelona, his city, the city that has provided him one of the most authentic, sincere and honest pictorial perspec-tives. He touches on his great love for Cuba. His intense social life, imbued with the smoke of a good Havana cigar. And always together with his family: Emi, Clàudia and Max.

This fresh, lively tale, which pulls no punches and is punctuated with irony, does not start at the beginning, nor does it finish at the end. Some doors in the artist’s memory are opened, while others remain closed. It is a story in which he is the main character, but above it is all a great homage to painting and to those who are able to appreciate it. Meanwhile, the many followers of his work – the people who have made this long journey possible – appear sporadically through the course of this book, on pages that are imbued with the smell of turpentine.

Cycle: Book Presentation: The smell of turpentine

Organized by: Residence for Researchers CSIC-Generalitat of Catalonia and beta editorial