SANTIAGO GARCÍA AND JAVIER OLIVARES

This is not the story of an artwork, is the story of how an artwork becomes a status symbol and a new attempt to answer the question that generations of artists, historians, critics and comic book writers have done to themselves: What is the hidden secret behind Las Meninas?

The project arises in 2008 when Javier Olivares and Santiago García publish a long comic book about Las Meninas trying to go beyond the historical record of its creation and the biographical epic poem about Velázquez in order to see the impact on later art history

The working process of this comic has been intermittent, it has lasted six years. The first phase was documentation, and then, the scriptwriter did a research about the graphic artist’s world. When writing a comic script is important to base your work on the illustrator’s imagination, style and personality. Each artist has a different way to see the world, and if the writer tells a story that does not adjust to the way they see it, this will end in a terrible result. Throughout the preparation process, the illustrator shares his sketches and character designs to help the writer see the story through his eyes. In that sense, we can say the script is written with the drawings in the same way that is drawn with the words.

The exhibition is divided into three narrative sections that explain the creating process of the graphic novel. “The key” shows part of the documentary material, original script pages, the complete storyboard and many early sketches. Then, “The Mirror” shows the process from pencil, to inking to colored printed pages. Finally, “The Cross” holds the definitive pages in color, the original photomechanical plates and the cover design. In addition, original artwork made ​​specifically for this exhibition is exhibited next to additional material not used in the book. As an epilogue, there is a study of the historical figures of Las Meninas, from Velázquez to Buero Vallejo or Equipo Crónica.