A book and all the solitude
2016 marks the first centenary of the birth of Camilo José Cela (1916–2002), a great Spanish writer of the twentieth century. This prolific author (novelist, journalist, essayist, publisher of literary journals, lecturer…) was a member of the Spanish Royal Academy for 45 years and received various awards during his lifetime, including the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 1987, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 and the Cervantes Prize in 1995.
The attractively-presented exhibition, organised jointly by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Fundación Pública Gallega Camilo José Cela with the collaboration of the BNE, takes a true-to-life look at all the author’s sides – novelist, storyteller, article writer, memorialist, playwright, lexicographer and poet – through more than 600 items such as books, paintings, manuscripts and objects, among others.
The exhibition’s curator, Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez, wished to illustrate other aspects of the Galician author’s personality that make up ‘the other Cela’: Cela the academy member, publisher, cultural promotor, connoisseur and lover of art and collector.
Entitled CJC 2016. El centenario de un Nobel. ‘Un libro y toda la soledad’ (The centenary of a Nobel laureate. ‘A book and all the solitude’), the exhibition, with its more than 44 sections, explores the fortunes and adversities in the writer’s life, focusing on CJC the storyteller, showing the importance of his novels and highlighting his relationship with culture and society during several periods in history.
2016 marks the first centenary of the birth of Camilo José Cela (1916–2002), a great Spanish writer of the twentieth century. This prolific author (novelist, journalist, essayist, publisher of literary journals, lecturer…) was a member of the Spanish Royal Academy for 45 years and received various awards during his lifetime, including the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 1987, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 and the Cervantes Prize in 1995.
The attractively-presented exhibition, organised jointly by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Fundación Pública Gallega Camilo José Cela with the collaboration of the BNE, takes a true-to-life look at all the author’s sides – novelist, storyteller, article writer, memorialist, playwright, lexicographer and poet – through more than 600 items such as books, paintings, manuscripts and objects, among others.
The exhibition’s curator, Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez, wished to illustrate other aspects of the Galician author’s personality that make up ‘the other Cela’: Cela the academy member, publisher, cultural promotor, connoisseur and lover of art and collector.
Entitled CJC 2016. El centenario de un Nobel. ‘Un libro y toda la soledad’ (The centenary of a Nobel laureate. ‘A book and all the solitude’), the exhibition, with its more than 44 sections, explores the fortunes and adversities in the writer’s life, focusing on CJC the storyteller, showing the importance of his novels and highlighting his relationship with culture and society during several periods in history.
