La Jornada: Patti Smith is awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts

Madrid. For her “vigorous style” and her “pulsating songs,” for being an “icon of popular music of our time” and for being a “writer” with a “poetic vision of life” who sends “a message of hope in the face of injustice,” the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts was awarded to Patti Smith, author of twenty books, iconoclastic poet and devotee of rhyme and the word of classics such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Artaud and Verlaine. Smith, with 50 years of artistic career, succeeds the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide in the award, but it is a coincidence that this award was received in 2007 by one of her closest friends and accomplices in literature and music: Bob Dylan.

After learning about the award, the writer, musician and artist declared: “if I had to summarize what this award means to me, I would do it with two words: art and love. For all the poets and painters who, from García Lorca to Picasso, have inspired me, and for all the affection I have received, especially from young people.”

Rejuvenated

So, she added, “I hope to arrive in Asturias a few days before the ceremony, because it so happens that next October 20 will be exactly 50 years since my first concert in Spain (October 20, 1976, in Badalona). I will turn 80 in December, but more than having the feeling of reaching the end of my path, this award makes me feel rejuvenated. I bless each day as the beginning of something new, in a world that needs more than ever our understanding, our work and our commitment to continue filling it with love and respect for others.”

The jury of the prestigious award explained in the award document the reasons why they had unanimously decided on the figure of Patti Smith, highlighting one of the least recognized facets of her work, that of a writer, both in her novels and autobiographies and in her heartbreaking poems, collected in several anthologies. In the jury report it is explained as follows: “for her impetuous creativity, which connects rock, symbolist poetry and the spirit of the counterculture with great expressive power”, but also for being a “performer with a vigorous style who has captured the rebellion of the individual in society in pulsating songs, some of which are already icons of the popular music of our time.”

Nonconformist and transgressive

Likewise, they highlighted his chronicle of youth with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, We were children. In this facet, the jury explains that “as a writer she has transmitted a poetic vision of life, committed to offering a message of hope in the face of injustice. With a nonconformist and transgressive attitude, an example for many artists, she has moved listeners and readers around the world and continues to inspire new generations.”

The 79-year-old novelist, poet and singer has published 11 studio albums and twenty books, including a trilogy of memoirs: Weaving dreams (2014), M Train (2016) y The year of the Monkey (2020), all in the Lumen publishing house. Unlike these titles, the most recent, Angel Breaddoes not focus on any specific period, but on his entire life, from that childhood in which he suffered “one contagious disease after another” to the recent discovery of the identity of his biological father. This autobiography is a good example of what Patti Smith has been for American culture in the second half of the 20th century: a privileged witness of the cultural and social transformations that the country has experienced and an exceptional protagonist.

Smith grew up in Philadelphia and Woodbury, New Jersey, and after graduating from school he began working at a very young age in a toy factory due to the financial difficulties his family was going through. In 1967 she moved to New York and worked as a bookseller, in addition to being a columnist and author of songs and plays, encouraged by the playwright and actor Sam Shepard, with whom she wrote Cowboy Mouth (1971). After a stay in Paris in 1971, back in New York, he recorded several songs with Allen Lanier, of the rock group Blue Öyster Cult.

But Patti Smith’s career has crossed the limits of what is strictly musical to become a multidisciplinary and iconoclastic communicator through artistic manifestations such as poetry, photography, performance or video installation. She has also linked her proposals to commitment to different political and social causes and is considered an icon of activism and the fight for civil rights.

Rock and poetry

In 1974 she recorded her first single with the Patti Smith Group, Hey Joe/Piss Factory (1974). In 1975 the group rose to fame with their album Horses, that fused punk rock and poetry. Patti Smith Group also posted Easter (1978) y Wave (1979), the first of them contained his successful Because the Nightwritten in collaboration with Bruce Springsteen.

In the 80s, Patti Smith lived practically retired from music until 1988 when she published Dream of Life. In 1995, a year after the death of her husband and brother, she toured with Bob Dylan and in 1996 she returned to work with her usual band, recording Gone Again. This work was followed by the albums Peace and Noise (1997), Gung Ho (2000), Land (1975-2002) y Trampin (2004).

Influenced by the work of the American beat generation, she has also made evident her taste for 19th century French poetry, especially that of Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine, as well as her devotion to authors such as García Lorca or the Chilean Roberto Bolaño, for whom she composed a song. In 1972 he published his first collection of poems, Seventh Heavenwhich they followed Witt (1973), kodak (1977), Babel (1978), Wool gathering (1992), Early Work (1994), The Coral Sea (1996) (The coral sea2012) y Auguries of Innocence (2005) (Omens of innocence2019), among others.

Smith has also turned his artistic talent to photography and other disciplines. He has held exhibitions and published the book of images A Book of Days (2022) and at the end of 2022 he exhibited a visual and sound installation inspired by Rimbaud, Artaud and Daumal at the Center Pompidou in Paris.

Currently, he continues to give concerts and poetry recitals and collaborate with artists from different fields, such as the group Soundwalk Collective, with which during 2024 he performed on stages and cultural centers around the world.

In this edition, a total of 55 candidates from 30 nationalities competed for the arts award. This is the first of eight Princess of Asturias awards to be awarded this year.