Contemporary art and literature in dialogue during the Madrid Book Fair
The Madrid Book Fair was born with the aim of bringing the book to the public and encouraging reading through a common and pleasant environment, in this case the Retiro Park. From May 29 to June 14, the 85th edition of the Madrid Book Fair will be held. From Marquesa Gallery we have decided to take the opportunity to remember the connection between literature and plastic art.
Since classical antiquity, both disciplines have been understood as complementary, as we can observe in the Latin topic Ut pictura poesis (such as painting, such is poetry) formulated by Horace. This idea suggests an equivalence between image and word: while literature leaves us stories in time, painting materializes them in space. At present, we can notice that the word is no longer simply a source of inspiration for plastic art, but that sometimes it is integrated into the works. In this way, literature and contemporary art are in the same territory of experimentation.
Therefore, we wanted to highlight three artists who influence literature for their projects: Rubén Martín de Lucas, Laura Segura and Marcela Cantuária.
Rubén Martín de Lucas: ecologies of thought and form
Rubén Martín de Lucas, The Garden of Fukuoka, 100 x 100 cm., acrylic, wax and oil on table
In the work of Rubén Martín de Lucas, painting becomes a bridge to reflect on our relationship with territory. His project The Fukuoka Garden establishes a direct dialogue with Masanobu Fukuoka and his work The revolution of a straw blade. In the book, Fukuoka proposes to practice agriculture with minimal human intervention, in order to respect the natural rhythms of the earth.
Martín de Lucas proposes to translate these ideas on a pictorial level, for this, he dispenses with the representative function of painting to understand art as a vehicle for transmitting concepts.
The work of Martín de Lucas not only helps us to reflect on how we relate to the earth, but also invites us to open an internal debate about how we relate to the world. The artist interprets monoculture as the Western way of life of hyperproduction. In that way, the rejection of monoculture is also a rejection of the digital capitalist system based on mass production. Martín de Lucas uses his project to get out of the role of painter who is dedicated to reflecting reality, to become an active part of the solution.
Laura Segura: Matter as a living language
Laura Segura, Unwrapped Wrapper, 250 cm., Beeswax, Pigment and Wood Thread, 2021
The artistic practice of Laura Segura does not stop at the end: the process is significantly important to understand his works. Through organic materials - cotton thread, beeswax and natural pigment - Segura aims to highlight the weight of the relationship between humans and nature. The natural elements converge with the symbolic, the organic and the spiritual. It seeks to generate in the viewer an experience that transcends the visual, to enter the rest of the senses.
Part of his inspiration comes from the work of Walt Whitman, especially in Leaves of Grass, where the body, nature and the spiritual form an organic continuity. On that same plane is his installation A braid of sacred grass (2022), included in Half-light, an installation that is influenced by the story of Rapunzel.
Here, hair ceases to be a narrative element to become a symbolic structure: escape route and symbol of personal power. The braid becomes a living structure, not only for the materials, but for the history it entails. Braiding is an ancestral technique that collects concepts of union, strength and community.
This thought expands by 13 degrees, inspired by Juhani Pallasma’s book Animals Architects — Like Bees. The work introduces the logic of organization of animals: collective systems without hierarchy, where intelligence emerges from common work. In Segura, matter not only represents the living, but activates it.
Marcela Cantuária: image, memory and insurrection
Marcela Cantúaria, La bestia, 60 x 50 cm., oil on canvas, 2023
The work of Marcela Cantuária is full of meanings. Its conceptual framework encompasses stories of resistance, magical symbolism, and collective memory. Cantuária believes in the transformative power of art, thus through painting he tries to create counter-narratives to colonialism and patriarchy.
His presence in Vitamin P4: New Perspectives in Painting places his work in the international panorama of contemporary painting. His work La bestia stands out for its various layers of conceptual complexity.
In this work, a hybrid creature – with dragon wings and legs – is composed of multiple heads that refer to the mythological Hydra. These heads represent historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, Pedro Álvares Cabral or Vasco da Gama, linked to colonialism. In this image, colonization appears as a system that regenerates, adapts and persists. This painting is an example of Cantuária’s great activist commitment.
The fire that breaks the composition is perceived as a gesture of resistance, an attempt to dissolve a historical cycle of exploitation. Cantuária explores the power of images to alter collective imaginaries.
The work may remind us of the writing of Eduardo Galeano, an important Latin American writer, especially with The Open Veins of Latin America, where Galeano conceives of history as an open wound and a disputed story. Cantuária’s painting offers a space where the memory is not only preserved, but also reactivated.
Reading and materiality
During the Madrid Book Fair, the city is immersed in books. However, the reading does not end there: it continues in the image, in the matter and in the contemplative experience. Madrid becomes a meeting of creation, encompassing both literature and contemporary art spaces.
Our gallery is located at this intersection between plastic art and literary creation: a surface where thought becomes tangible and matter becomes language. We invite you to discover these convergences in our rooms, in which art is not only gaze, but also reading.