Smoke

Book presentation

Writer Chantal Maillard and artist Frederic Amat have joined forces to create “Smoke”, a small author’s edition of just 100 signed copies. The artistic director of Museo Picasso Málaga, José Lebrero, will be talking to Maillard and Amat about the artistic complicity that gave rise to the book, which brings together poetry and photographic images. There will also be a screening of a video by the artist, entitled “Tableaux Vivants”, and which contains eight of his creations.

​Frederic Amat (Barcelona, 1952) is a multidisciplinary artist who works in the visual and performing arts. In the 1970s he was interested in experimental and conceptual art and produced various of his own creations. At the end of the seventies, he began to make a series of journeys to North Africa, Mexico and the U.S. These had a profound effect on his work, leading him to produce a highly expressive body of work with a strong symbolic content, such as rituals, magic and religion. His broad and varied output features set designs, theatrical adaptations and the direction of several films. In 2007, he received the National Visual Arts Award of Catalonia.

Chantal Maillard (Brussels, 1951) is a Spanish poet and philosopher born in Belgium. She has been awarded the Spanish National Poetry Prize (2004) and Critics’ Award (2007). Maillard has lived in Málaga since 1963 and currently spends long periods of time in Barcelona. She holds a PhD in philosophy and is a professor of art aesthetics and theory, teaching at Universidad de Málaga until 2001. She has lived in Vanarasi (Benares), where she specialized in Indian philosophy and religions. The author of numerous books of poetry, essays and prose works, she is considered “one of the most intense, honest and radical poetic voices today”. (M.L. Blanco, El País).

The presentation of “Smoke” will be held in the Contigo Cara a Cara educational space, inside the Face to Face. Picasso and the Old Masters exhibition.