2023-06-06 14:53:06
The star of the exhibition is a portrait of Juan Ramón Jiménez painted by Sorolla in 1903. The poet is still young, with still dark hair and beard. It is a painting that is exhibited for the first time in Spain, thanks to the transfer that the University of Puerto Rico has made for the exhibition ‘The Spanish intellectual exile in Puerto Rico’ that is hosted by the National Library of Spain until September 3. The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, as well as the Government of Puerto Rico. By the way: next to Juan Ramón’s painting there is another Sorolla: the one he dedicated to Zenobia Campubrí, his wife, in 1918.
The director of the National Library of Spain, Ana Santos Aramburo, highlighted at the inauguration the importance of this type of collaborative projects in which “institutional wills come together with a single objective: to spread culture, tell stories like this of our exile, part of our memory». For his part, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez López, recalled that “all exiles are painful and even more so if they are the consequence of defending democratic values.” “The exile that is being talked about here is the most important diaspora that has happened in Spain in contemporary times,” he stressed.
The exhibition, curated by Ernesto Estrella Cózar, reconstructs the broad context of Spanish intellectual exile through the cultural activity of a group of intellectuals. Taking the story of love and intellectual work of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Zenobia Camprubí as the common thread, more than a hundred pieces take us to Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century. Together with them, the life and work of renowned writers, composers, teachers and artists such as Pau Casals, María Zambrano, Francisco Ayala, Pedro Salinas, Fernando de los Ríos or Aurora de Albornoz, who made Puerto Rico their home and who they participated intensely in the socio-cultural life of the island.
Along with a large number of original materials –manuscripts, photographs, personal objects, including the telegram with which Juan Ramón was awarded the Nobel Prize or a replica of his Nobel medal–, the exhibition has an audiovisual dimension that completes the immersion in this fragment of shared history. A game of mirrors, images and reflections allow the public to share for a few minutes the “exile experience” of all those who leave their land behind. Today’s Spanish and Puerto Rican artists also join, through a projection, this celebration of the solid link between both cultural spaces.
Designed by Aurora Herrera, the exhibition turns the Recoletos room of the BNE into a crossroads and vital trajectories. Corridors and crossroads that represent the lives of the protagonists of the exhibition in a spacious and bright environment, as life was like in San Juan, Puerto Rico at times despite the circumstances that led them there. An island where there was room for happiness and hope, creation and culture, exchange and intellectual enrichment.
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