Alberto Gironella, Barón de Beltenebros, 2003
Palacio de Bellas Artes, México

My first curatorial project at the Palacio de Bellas Artes was the first retrospective exhibition of Alberto Gironella after his death in 1999.  Diving in his world through his personal archive and his enormous library was an unexpected adventure where a fascinating man full of passion, obsessions, shadows and lights was revealed.

Gironella was a man of books. His collection of hundreds of books, intervened with emotional notes and drawings, nurtured his vast production of series about the Spanish Golden Age, the Monarchy or the macabre.  He was also a man of obsessions.  Velazquez, El Greco, Goya, Zapata, Madonna or Malcolm Lowry were the subject of multiple series where he destroyed and recreated the scenes like a recurring dream with subtle variations.