Like the great people, like the saints of the Catholic Church, Antonio Gala (1930-2023) has its own iconography. If his face was not recognizable, there are the elements with which he posed so many times: the books, the pen and especially the dogs and the cane.
“Regards Croissants” is the title of the exhibition which can be visited until October 31 at the Antonio Gala Foundation for Young creatorsAmbrosio de Morales street, and which brings together dozens of works spread over several decades, from his youth to around ninety years old.
The viewer can find a portrait signed by Fernando Somoza with a tone tenebrist close to certain painters of the first half of the 20th century, and in which the extreme youth of this wounded young man who already stood out as a great writer is evident.
The drawing in which Ginés Liébana captured it dates from 1953 and is dated Paris. Very quickly, Antonio Gala opted for a very specific image, with the cane held very close to the face, and almost always in the same pose profile, which was his favorite, the left one.
The viewer will therefore find it in photographs and paintingssmiling in public poses, but also in privacy, and their dogs are present, almost always small. These are the images in which Antonio Gala smiles the most.
There Troylothe dachshund who starred in those famous conferences that the Cordovan writer used as a common thread for a series of articles that were later collected into a book. There he goes from youth to adulthoodthen until maturity and ending with a face full of wrinkles but always thinking of literature, of the most recent photography.
Posters and stamps
From there to the posters for the Gala Week, organized in recent years by its foundation, and which has been signed on numerous occasions by the residents themselves, such as Jesus Zurita in one of the cases. Also a postmark with the photograph from which it came.
Among all the photographs, many of which are unposed and very natural, one stands out with glassesalmost stolen from someone who has a reputation for being flirtatious and taking care of her ever-unmistakable image. More than once she was seen with them at the opening of her foundation course, so the portrait of Antonio Gala would not be complete without her.
