Cervantes Institute
The Cervantes Institute and the Spanish Academy inaugurate an artistic installation that recalls the passage of this marriage of writers through the Eternal City, where they spent part of their exile
Rome left a deep mark on the life and artistic production of Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León, who spent 14 years of their exile in the Italian capital until, finally, they were able to return to Spain in 1977 after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy. In the year in which the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Cadiz poet is celebrated, the Cervantes Institute and the Royal Academy of Spain paid tribute to this couple of writers, exponents of the generation of 27, with an artistic installation inaugurated this Thursday and carried out by the sculptors Clara Montoya and Miki Leal. The work is located in an emblematic place, the staircase that connects the Academy with the traditional neighborhood of Trastevere, where the second of the houses in which the marriage formed by Alberti and León lived was located.
“In Rome, María Teresa wrote her great book, ‘Memoria de la melancolía’, while Rafael also carried out some important works such as ‘Roma danger for walkers,'” the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, explained to this newspaper. He dedicated his doctoral thesis to Alberti, with whom he maintained a friendly relationship. «For them Rome was a city where they were very happy, in which they remembered and thought with enthusiasm about Spain while they came into contact with Italian art and culture, from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Vittorio Gassman».
For García Montero, with this artistic installation, Spain settles a debt that it owed, in particular, to León. «The Cervantes Institute had already named a library after Rafael Alberti, but we still needed to pay homage to the great María Teresa León and, thanks to the collaboration with the Spanish Academy, we have been able to complete this project». The fact that the artistic installation made by Clara Montoya and Miki Leal is at the foot of the Academy is a further vindication of the figure of León and Alberti, who, while they lived in Rome, were not allowed to visit this body in which young Spanish artists receive scholarships. “They could not enter because of the Franco regime, so now we need them to be in the institutions and keep them very much in mind,” said the director of the Cervantes Institute, also highlighting the need to remember the light of the figure of León, who was always in the shadow of her husband. In her opinion, ‘Memoria de la melancolía’ is “the best memoir of Spanish exile”.
The installation proposed by Clara Montoya consists of a kind of desk, made of wood and marble, where anyone can sit down to study, write, draw or enjoy magnificent views of the Eternal City. Called ‘Estudio 31’, the work pretends to metaphorically offer Alberti’s wife a workplace at the Academy, as “she would have deserved”, according to Montoya “It is a tribute to the tenacity of her work, which also creates a welcoming space for who today cannot enter the institutions».
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