The National Library hangs the “portentous” portrait of Álvaro Pombo: “He has rejuvenated me, but he has not lied”

The National Library of Spain This Thursday, he posted the “portentous” portrait that the painter Hernán Cortés Moreno made of the writer and 2024 Cervantes Prize winner, Álvaro Pombo.

“Yeah I’m not that young to lie down like that on the couches. Curiously it has rejuvenated me Through movement, I can no longer lie down in chairs. I can lie in bed, but lying in an armchair is strange. He has rejuvenated me, but he has not lied because it is plausible that he does it (the pose), I have always done it,” said Pombo during the presentation of the work at the Italian Hall of the Madrid headquarters of the institution.

The portrait – originally made with a mixture of several techniques – is a digital print of a canvas that Cortés Moreno has made to show the Cervantes Prize leaning on one hand in an armchair, in front of some blank pages. Pombo dresses his ya characteristic blue wool hat.

Precisely, the author has gone to the discovery of the work –“prettier and bigger” than he imagined– with another hat, although more summery.

Furthermore, he joked that the painting doesn’t “fit” in your houseso he will have to stay at the BNE and he will receive some vouchers to “see him on Sundays and holidays.” “It’s very modern and original, I’m very excited and amazed. How big is this? I can’t fit it in my house,” he began.

“It fits right through the door but you have to leave it right there. It’s a decent maiden apartment (her house) and it fits a lot of small paintings, but this is a painting for the Palace of the Prince of Peace, a palace painting“, he pointed out.

The work will be located for a year in the place of honor where it was hung this Thursday, presiding over the Italian Hall. Pombo himself has wondered if after this year they will “take him to the caves.”

The writer added that the sheet is “fiction”“but that is directed towards its essence, which is what it has “really” become, because its “existence” is found in the wheelchair that allows you to move.

“I can bear my appearance, which is not dazzlingly beautifying,” he added and then assured that the artist has represented him with a “saving realism” with which he has exchanged the “radiance” of “beauty” for the “radiance of precision.”

“No one who sees this painting will fail to remember the 86 years old that I am now. The only cool thing about the painting is that I’m reclining a little, which is a grant to youth“, has finished.

On the other hand, Cortés Moreno has explained that the technique used, —‘glicée’ print on a high-quality cotton paper– achieves “in the best of cases” a result that “aspires and has to be possible.” greater graphic force than the original itself”.