La pasión por el libro: una aventura editorial

At the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía this exhibition presents illustrations made by Pablo Picasso for La obra maestra desconocida by Honoré de Balzac or collaborations by Francisco Bores and José Caballero for Llanto por la muerte de Ignacio Sánchez Mejías by Federico García Lorca. There are also works by Salvador Dalí for The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and illustrations by Joan Miró for The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder by Henry Miller, who received the praise of the writer himself, impressed by Miró’s work.

Antonio Saura works with the publishing house for twenty years and is the artist who illustrates the most Círculo de Lectores books, among which are Flor nueva de greguerías by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela, Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes and Franz Kafka's Tagebücher.

Also noteworthy is the work by Eduardo Arroyo for James Joyce's Ulysses, the etchings of José Hernández for Die Verwandlung by Kafka and The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, as well as three novels of fellow Argentine Ernesto Sabato, El túnel, Sobre héroes y tumbas and Abaddón el exterminador. Also to be displayed are five original and unpublished illustrations by Miquel Barceló for the upcoming release of La divine comédie by Dante.

The exhibition also presents titles from the Círculo de Lectores which refer to the publication of collected works of Spanish and foreign authors, such as Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, an author for whom Museo Reina Sofía is holding an exhibition on his book Ismos, written in 1931.

In this large collection there is also place for various Círculo de Lectores thematic collections, such as the one devoted to poetry, which publishes the works of authors such as Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antonio Machado, José Ángel Valente -whose anthology El fulgor‘s cover has been illustrated by Antoni Tàpies- Blanca Valera, Octavio Paz and Vicente Huidobro, whose painted poems Salle XIV the Museo Reina Sofía has reedited on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the Chilean in 2001. In turn the collections of Classical Greek, Classical Latin, Classical Spanish, European Modern Masters, Anglo-Saxon Modern Masters, Contemporary Essays, Science, Eastern Literature and Philosophy, featuring illustrators such as Miguel Condé, Eduardo Arranz-Bravo, Eduardo Úrculo, Eduardo Arroyo and Antonio Saura can be found.

Parallel to this, at Library of the Museum, is the exhibition Archivos 1971-2002, an exhaustive tour of the Colección Archivos de la Literatura Latinoamericana, where more than fifty titles of relevance are published.