Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Las Savias. Libro Nº 544 [The Saps. Book No. 544]

Image caption
MIGUEL ÁNGEL BLANCO

Las Savias. Libro Nº 544 [The Saps. Book No. 544]

  • 1993
  • 4 pages of off-white resinated laid paper. Pinewood box with 3 strips of liquid resin.
  • 222 x 550 x 31 cm
  • Cat. E_108
  • Acquired in 1994
  • Observations: From the series 'The Library of the Forest'. The work is numbered by the author as Book No. 544.
By:
Beatriz Espejo

The work Saps (1993) is part of Miguel Ángel Blanco's most important project, The Library of the Forest, begun in 1986, which now comprises 1145 box-books. No. 544 is one of the pieces arising out his research into resins, which act as the trees' lifeblood. The artist collected different kinds of resin, before selecting those he considered most suitable for inclusion in the book, by virtue of their tone, transparency or place of origin. He used the resin in all its different states — blocks, powder and liquid. On the pages, he drew diagrams in fire-fixed powdered resin that evoke distant firmaments, based on the notion that sap is comparable to the dark matter of space, a condensation of light and time. Through a drop of resin, he argues, we can see into the deepest cosmos.

Beatriz Espejo

 
By:
Beatriz Espejo
Miguel Ángel Blanco
Madrid 1958

The work of Miguel Ángel Blanco centres on nature. He began his most important project, The Library of the Forest, in 1986. It consists of box-books containing botanical, mineral, animal and insect items taken from nature, sealed behind glass, with some introductory pages containing drawings, engravings and photographic prints. Blanco sees these box-books as microcosms, new landscapes that express nature in all its phenomenology and in all its geographical and symbolic breadth. Blanco lived for many years in the Sierra de Guadarrama, his favourite artistic stomping ground. In 2006, La Casa Encendida in Madrid staged an exhibition of his work entitled 'Visions of Guadarrama. Miguel Ángel Blanco and the pioneering artists of the Sierra'. The show featured his box-books alongside paintings by some of the outstanding nineteenth-century Spanish landscape artists who had found their inspiration in these same mountains. Several selections from his Library of the Forest have been exhibited at the National Library of Madrid, the National Print Museum of Mexico City, the César Manrique Foundation in Lanzarote, the National Museum of Engraving in Madrid and the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos (Reina Sofía Museum), among other venues.

In 2008, Blanco was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture to create a tribute to the dead beech tree in the garden of the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation in Madrid, where he also staged an exhibition entitled 'Fallen Tree', focusing on the relationship between tree and time. In 2013 the Prado Museum presented his Natural Histories project, which references the original purpose of Juan de Villanueva's building as a natural science museum. In the exhibition, Blanco drew links between some of the most important paintings housed in the Prado, historical specimens from all the natural kingdoms and his own work, to create a remarkable contemporary Wunderkammer. In 2015 he curated 'The Illusion of the American Frontier' at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. In 1995 he was awarded the National Engraving Award and in 2004 the Villa de Madrid 'Lucio Muñoz' Engraving Award.

Beatriz Espejo

 
«Cosmocrator», Galería Barcena & Cia (Madrid, 1994).
Elena Vozmediano Miguel Ángel Blanco, Madrid, Galería Bárcena & Cia, 1994. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.